Trench bent his head again to his companion and now
heard more clearly.
"I saw your light that morning ... you put it out suddenly ... did you
hear my step on the gravel?... I thought you did, it hurt rather," and
then he broke out into an emphatic protest. "No, no, I had no idea that
you would wait. I had no wish that you should. Afterwards, perhaps, I
thought, but nothing more, upon my word. Sutch was quite wrong.... Of
course there was always the chance that one might come to grief
oneself--get killed, you know, or fall ill and die--before one asked you
to take your feather back; and then there wouldn't even have been a
chance of the afterwards. But that is the risk one had to take."
The allusion was not direct enough for Colonel Trench's comprehension.
He heard the word "feather," but he could not connect it as yet with any
action of his own. He was more curious than ever about that
"afterwards"; he began to have a glimmering of its meaning, and he was
struck with wonderment at the thought of how many men there were going
about the world with a calm and commonplace demeanour beneath which
were hidden quaint fancies and poetic beliefs, never to be so much as
suspected, until illness deprived the brain of its control.
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