He
did up those straps as though he were used to them; but he can't be an
artist, or he'd have said something. It was a face with lots of power in
it. Not very good-tempered, I should say? But there's something about
him--yes, distinctly, _something_! I liked his thin cheeks, and his dark
curls. His head, too, was uncommonly well set on. I'm sure that there's a
good deal to him, as the Americans say; he's not stuffed with sawdust. I
can imagine--just imagine--being in love with him."
She laughed to herself.
Then a sudden thought occurred to her, which reddened her cheeks. Suppose
when the young man came to think over it, he believed that she had let
the papers fall into the river--deliberately--on purpose--just to attract
his attention? At the very precise moment that he comes upon the scene,
she slips into the water. Of course!--an arranged affair!
She sat on, meditating in some discomfort.
"It is no use deceiving ourselves," she thought. "We're not in the good
old Tennysonian days. There's precious little chivalry now! Men don't
idealize women as they used. They're grown far more suspicious--and
_harder_. Perhaps because women have grown so critical of them! Anyway
something's gone--what is it? Poetry? Illusion? And yet!--why is it that
men still put us off our balance?--even now--that they matter so much
less, now that we live our own lives, and can do without them? I
shouldn't be sitting here, bothering my head, if it had been another girl
who had come to help.
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