What a bare, hotelish room it was! He tossed off his coat and sat
for ten minutes looking blankly at the sputtering gas jet. Then
his whole life, desolate as a desert, loomed up before him with
appalling distinctness. Throwing himself on the floor beside
his bed, with clasped hands and arms outstretched on the white
counterpane, he sobbed. "Oh! God, dear God, I thought you loved me;
I thought you'd let me have her again, but you must be tired of me,
tired of loving me too. I've nothing left now, nothing! it doesn't
seem that I even have you to-night."
He lifted his face then, for his dog, big and clumsy and yellow,
was licking at his sleeve.
The Envoy Extraordinary
There had been a great deal of trouble in the Norris family, and
for weeks old Bill Norris had gone about scowling as blackly as a
thunder-cloud, speaking to no one but his wife and daughter, and
oftentimes muttering inaudible things that, however, had the tone
of invective; and accompanied, as these mutterings were, with a
menacing shake of his burley head, old Bill finally grew to be an
acquaintance few desired.
Mrs. Norris showed equal, though not similar, signs of mental
disturbance; for, womanlike, she clothed her worry in placidity and
silence.
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