Coke felt now that he disliked her, and he read
plainly her dislike of him. If they were the two
villains of the play, they were not having fun together
at all. Each had some kind of a deep knowledge that
their aspirations, far from colliding, were of such
character that the success of one would mean at least
assistance to the other, but neither could see how to
confess if. Pethapt it was from shame, perhaps it
was because Nora thought Coke to have little wit ;
perhaps it was because Coke thought Nora to have
little conscience. Their talk was mainly rudderless.
From time to time Nora had an inspiration to come
boldly at the point, but this inspiration was commonly
defeated by, some extraordinary manifestation of
Coke's incapacity. To her mind, then, it seemed like
a proposition to ally herself to a butcher-boy in a
matter purely sentimental. She Wondered indignantly
how she was going to conspire With this lad,
who puffed out his infantile cheeks in order to conceitedly
demonstrate that he did not understand the
game at all. She hated Marjory for it. Evidently it
was only the weaklings who fell in love with that girl.
Coleman was an exception, but then, Coleman was
misled, by extraordinary artifices. She meditatecf for
a moment if she should tell Coke to go home and not
bother her. What at last decided the question was
his unhappiness. Shd clung to this unhappiness for
its value as it stood alone, and because its reason for
existence was related to her own unhappiness. " You
Say you are not going back toAthens with your party.
I don't suppose you're going to stay here. I'm going
back to Athens to-day. I came up here to see a
battle, but it doesn't seem that there are to be any
more battles., The fighting will now all be on the
other side of'the mountains." Apparent she had
learned in some haphazard way that the Greek
peninsula was divided by a spine of almost inaccessible
mountains, and the war was thus split into two
simultaneous campaigns. The Arta campaign was known
to be ended. "If you want to go back to Athens
without consorting with your friends, you had better go
back with me. I can take you in my carriage as far
as the beginning of the railroad. Don't you worry.
You've got money enough, haven't you ? The pro-
fessor isn't keeping your money ?"
"Yes," he said slowly, "I've got money enough."
He was apparently dubious over the proposal.
In their abstracted walk they had arrived in front of
the house occupied by Coleman and the Wainwright
party. Two carriages, forlorn in dusty age, stood be-
fore the door. Men were carrying out new leather
luggage and flinging it into the traps amid a great
deal of talk which seemed to refer to nothing. Nora
and Coke stood looking at the scene without either
thinking of the importance of running away, when
out tumbled seven students, followed immediately but
in more decorous fashion by the Wainwrights and
Coleman.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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