To myself I am not unhappy."
"Why won't you tell me, Edith, just where you are?"
The sound of her name was somewhat unfamiliar to their discourse. The
intonation which his voice gave to it now caused her to look up quickly.
"If I could tell myself," she answered him, after an
instant's thought, "pray believe that I would tell you."
The way seemed for the moment blocked before him, and he
sighed heavily. "I want to get nearer to you," he said,
with gloom, "and I don't!"
It occurred to her to remark: "You take exception to my
phraseology when I say you always try to be 'nice,' but I'm
sure you know what I mean." She offered him this assurance
with a tentative smile, into which he gazed moodily.
"You didn't think I was 'nice' when you consented to
marry me," he was suddenly inspired to say. "I can't
imagine your applying that word to me then in your mind.
God knows what it was you did say to yourself about me,
but you never said I was 'nice.' That was the last
word that would have fitted me then--and now it's
the only one you can think of." The hint that somehow
he had stumbled upon a clue to the mysteries enveloping
him rose to prominence in his mind as he spoke.
The year had wrought a baffling difference in him.
He lacked something now that then he had possessed,
but he was powerless to define it.
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