Page:Imre.pdf/41

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39

Probably this is the best place in my narrative to record certain particularly personal aspects of Lieutenant Imre, though in giving them I must draw on details and impressions that I gained gradually—later. During even that earlier stage of our friendship, he insisted on my going with him to his father's house, house, to meet his parents. From them, as from two or three of his officer-friends with whom I occasionally foregathered, when Imre did not happen to be of the party of us, I derived facts—side-lights and perspectives—of use. But the most part of what I note came from Imre's tendency toward introspection; and from his own frank lips.

He had been a singularly sensitive, warm-hearted boy, indeed too high-strung, too impressionable. He had been petted by even the merest strangers be cause of his engaging manners and his peculiarly striking boyish beauty. He had not been robust as a lad (though now superbly so) with the result that his schooling had been desultory and unsystematic. "And I wanted to study art, I didn't care what