"The trouble is with me," he said. "I do not understand the world, and
I should keep out of it."
"Oh, not at all," she retorted briskly. "You should learn how to live
in it."
A spark of mischief kindled in her glance as she spoke, and she
extended to him the back of her hand. Her smile challenged him, and he
had been won and moved by the sympathy of her voice. The hand, too, was
so beautiful, so slender, so feminine; he had so keen a longing to be
comforted, to be soothed by womanly softness, and to assuage his
loneliness by woman's sympathy, that it seemed impossible to resist the
invitation of those delicate fingers. He took her hand, and raised it
half way to his lips. Then he dropped it abruptly, letting his own arm
swing lifelessly to his side.
"No," he said bitterly. "I am a priest!"
X
A SYMPATHY OF WOE
Titus Andronicus, iii. 1.
The first sensation which returning consciousness brought to Berenice
Morison, after the shock of the collision and the feeling that the
whole train had been hurled confusedly into space, was that of coming
into fresher air as if she were emerging from the depths of the sea.
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