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Who Goes There!
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"In your arms, practically…" She looked up at him curiously: "What did you think of me, Kervyn?"
"I thought you were an exceedingly tired girl."
"I was. Is that all you thought about it?"
"You know," he said, laughing, "when a man is asleep he doesn't do much thinking."
"What did you think afterward?"
"About what?"
"About my sleeping against your shoulder?"
"Nothing," he said carelessly.
"Were you quite – indifferent?"
He didn't know how to answer.
"I was not," she said. "I was contented, and I thought continually about our friendship – except when what I was doing made me uneasy about – what I was doing… Isn't it curious that a girl could do a thing like that and feel comfortable except when she remembered that a girl doesn't usually do a thing like that?"
He began to laugh, and she laughed, too.
She said: "Always my inclination has been, from a child, to explain things to myself. But I can't explain you, yet. You are very different, you know."
"Not a bit – "
"Yes, please. I've found that out… Tell me, do you really mean to go today?"
"Yes, Karen, I do."
"Couldn't you stay?"
"I really couldn't."
"Why, please?"
"I must be about my business."
"Enlistment?"
"Yes."
"In the Guides," she said, as though to herself.
He nodded.
"The Guides," she repeated, looking rather vacantly at a sun spot that waxed and waned on the dry carpet of fir-needles at her feet. "I have seen them. They are odd, with their furry headgear and their green jackets and boots and cherry-red breeches… I have danced with officers of the Guides in Brussels… I never thought that my first man friend would be an officer in the Guides."
"I never thought my best friend among women would be the first woman I ever robbed," he said rather grimly.
"Oh, but you haven't done it yet! And I don't see how you propose to do it."
He looked up, forcing a smile:
"Don't you?"
"Not if you are going away. How can you? The only way I can see is for you to stay at Quellenheim in hopes that I might forget to lock my door some night. You know," she said, almost wistfully, "I might forget – if you remained long enough."
He shook his head.
"Then you have given it up?"
"No."
"But I don't see!"
She was so pretty in her perplexity, so utterly without art in her frankness and curiosity that the impulse to mystify and torment her possessed him.
"Will you bet that I shall not have those papers in my possession within ten minutes?" he asked.
"How can you?"
"I can. And I shall."
She gazed at him incredulously, then suddenly her cheeks lost their colour and she stood up under the fir-tree.
"Must I take them or will you give them up, Karen?" he asked, laughing, as he rose.
She took a step backward, away from him. The tree-trunk checked her.
"You know I can't give them to you," she said unsteadily. "It would be dishonourable."
"Am I to take them?"
"Are you going to?"
"Do you mean to say that rather than surrender them you would endure such violence as that?"
"I promised… Are you going to – to hurt me, Kervyn?" she stammered.
"I'll try not to."
She stood there, breathing fast, white, defiant.
"You'll have to surrender," he said. "You might as well. It's an honourable capitulation in the presence of superior force."
"No."
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Книга дельная. Без воды, приводятся реальные кейсы и способы их разрешения. Много практичных полезных советов и методик. Кое-что уже испробовала в дел...
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