THE OUTCRY
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if he shrank, with his preoccupations, from a tender passage; but he let her take his left hand. "So I feel!" he was, however, kind enough to answer.
"Do feel!" she returned with much concentration. She raised the hand to her pressed lips, dropped it and with a rich "Good-bye!" reached the threshold of the other room.
"May I smoke?" he asked before she had disappeared.
"Dear, yes!"
He had meanwhile taken out his cigarette case and was looking about for a match. But something else occurred to him. "You must come to Victoria."
"Rather!" she said with intensity; and with that she passed away.
VI
Left alone he had a moment's meditation where he stood; it found issue in an articulate "Poor dear thing!"—an exclamation marked
