Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 4, 2025
Towards the end of the year he went down to the Midlands to stay with his friend Perry Clinton. They had not met for several years, and Clinton, who had married in the interval, also thought him changed. "Is it prosperity or adversity that has made you so tame, dear fellow?" he asked him, as they sat together over dessert one night. "Adversity," said Merefleet, smiling faintly.
You are just too quaint for anything." Merefleet did not see the joke, but he did not ask for an explanation. Seton himself strolled on to the terrace and joined them directly after; and Mab began to shiver and went indoors. The two men sat together for some time, talking little. Seton seemed preoccupied and Merefleet became sleepy. It was he who at length proposed a move. Seton rose instantly.
Young Seton greeted Merefleet with less cordiality than he had displayed on the previous evening. There was a suggestion of caution in his manner that created a somewhat unfavourable impression in Merefleet's mind. Already he was beginning to wonder how these two came to be thus isolated in the forgotten little town of Old Silverstrand. It was not a natural state of affairs.
Merefleet had never before spoken so openly to him. He realised that the man's loneliness must oppress him heavily indeed thus to master his reserve. "What news?" said Merefleet, after a pause. "Nothing," said Clinton. "Plague on the Continent. Railway mishap on the Great Northern. Another American Disaster." "What's that?" said Merefleet with a touch of interest. "Electric car accident.
Merefleet smiled a little. "Well, if she likes to run the risk it's not your fault," he said. "No, sir. It ain't. But that don't make me any easier. She's a pretty young lady, too," the man added. "Maybe you've seen her, sir." Merefleet shook his head. He had heard her, and he had no desire to improve his acquaintance with her.
Supposing he did, should you care any?" "I don't know," said Merefleet. Her eyes were full of a soft laughter as she looked at him. Suddenly she laid a childish hand on his arm. "Oh, you poor old Bear!" she said, dropping her voice a little. "I'm real sorry for you!" And then she turned swiftly and was gone from his side like a flash of sunlight.
"I was ill," said Merefleet, "or I should have been out of New York before that dinner came off. I always detested the place. And Warrender would have done far better in my place." "I am not an admirer of Warrender," said Seton bluntly. Merefleet made no comment. He was never very free in the statement of his opinion.
And, her voice hushed to a whisper, she moved a pace nearer to him and told him. "Just a little baby friend of mine who lives over there," she said. "I'm going to see him some day. I guess he'll be glad, don't you?" "Who wouldn't?" said Merefleet. "But that's not the West, you know." "No," she said simply. "He's in the Land beyond the sea, Big Bear."
Merefleet said, conscious of a hidden barrier between them. "Can't you trust yourself to me? Is that it? Are you afraid of me? You didn't shrink from me yesterday." She bowed her head. Yesterday she had wept in his arms. But to-day no tears came. Only a halting whisper, a woman's cry of sheer weakness. "Don't tempt me, Big Bear!" she murmured. "Oh, don't tempt me! I am not free!"
Neither the girl with her marvellous beauty, nor the man with his peculiar concentration of purpose, was a fitting figure for such a background. They were out of place most noticeably so. Merefleet was the very last man to make observations of such a description. But this was a matter so obvious and so undeniably strange that it forced itself upon him half against his will.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking