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Updated: June 7, 2025
The ache, the hunger for happiness sharpened by vague premonitions of mischance, began again to pound in his heart. At the Ammidons' it was clear immediately that Rhoda's manner toward him had changed: it had become more social, even voluble, and restrained. She conversed brightly about trivial happenings, while he sat listening, gravely silent.
A vivacious and brilliant state of being flooded him; he felt capable of profoundly witty conversation, and laughed at the solemn absurdities of the Ammidons, at his father attempting to call down a blessing out of the empty sky upon their food, at his sister's lugubrious countenance, the childish emotions of Nettie. What a nonsensical strutting business life was.
He thought she walked to him through the gloom; he saw her slender body grow brighter as she approached; he heard her speak in a low native murmur; their hands caught in an eager tangle. He put aside, momentarily, the problem of the difficulties of going again to the Ammidons' for an easier one the bringing of Gerrit Ammidon here.
She was undismayed; and when, in reply to the question, she learned that he had been at the Ammidons' her surprise increased his irritation. He saw from her manner that his calling there had been at least unexpected. Nettie interrupted the preparation of the table for breakfast, and dropped into a chair beyond him, her hands the sleeves were rolled back to her elbows clasped before her.
A more general hatred of Gerrit tightened to a consuming resentment of the other's blind fortune. One thing was unmistakably borne upon him in spite of the courtesy he was meeting it was clear that he could not hope to become a customary visitor at the Ammidons'. He was put definitely outside the community of interests in which Brevard easily entered.
Gerrit and his wife had not yet arrived, and the pilot, making a leisurely appearance, stopped to exchange remarks with the Ammidons. He climbed on board the ship and Roger could see his head and shoulders moving toward the poop and mounting the ladder.
Yet, just the fact of his being close behind her, and that she would be on the steps at the Ammidons' with him, undoubtedly had a power to stir her heart. It brought, like her carefree excursion, a certain momentary glow, a warmth, without relation to what had gone before or might follow; there was the same quality of momentary rest, refreshment, complete and isolated as a jewel in a ring.
She caught a last glimmer of white trousers, a faint rapid gleam where his lighted cheroot described the arc of a passionate gesture on the night. The spring, like the full buds of the hedge roses in the Ammidons' garden, passed swiftly into early summer. The flowers against the house showed gay perennial colors, the stocks and larkspur and snapdragons succeeded the retreating flood of the lilacs.
The obvious thing was for him to wait through the year or more until the Ammidons would hear of a proposal and then urge his desire.... He could see her quite often meanwhile. Yes, that was the sensible course, even in the face of his own multiplying years.
The President's reply, hardly more than a few introductory phrases, cut short, the barouche was sent plunging over its route with the Secretary crying, "Drive on! Drive on!" and Marshal Barnes swearing and expectorating in callous profusion. Some of the crowd, the Ammidons heard, had been knocked down and injured in the pell-mell of the rush.
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