The truth is,
that I never knew it until the poor girl came along--the poor girl
who was just as straight, as splendid and as upright as he. I swear
she was. I suppose I ought to have known. I suppose that was,
really, why I liked him so much--so infinitely much. Come to think
of it, I can remember a thousand little acts of kindliness, of
thoughtfulness for his inferiors, even on the Continent. Look here,
I know of two families of dirty, unpicturesque, Hessian paupers
that that fellow, with an infinite patience, rooted up, got their
police reports, set on their feet, or exported to my patient land.
And he would do it quite inarticulately, set in motion by seeing a
child crying in the street. He would wrestle with dictionaries, in
that unfamiliar tongue. . . . Well, he could not bear to see a child
cry. Perhaps he could not bear to see a woman and not give her
the comfort of his physical attractions. But, although I liked him
so intensely, I was rather apt to take these things for granted. They
made me feel comfortable with him, good towards him; they
made me trust him. But I guess I thought it was part of the
character of any English gentleman. Why, one day he got it into his
head that the head waiter at the Excelsior had been crying--the
fellow with the grey face and grey whiskers.
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