This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ... spoke. "Jake must never know," he said. And we, too, kissed in the wind of the spring. BOOK THE THIRD THE HEAT AND BURDEN OF THE DAY CHAPTER IX NE day about three weeks later Jake dropped in to see us. He had come, he announced, to invite us to dinner at the little flat on the north side where he lived with ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ... spoke. "Jake must never know," he said. And we, too, kissed in the wind of the spring. BOOK THE THIRD THE HEAT AND BURDEN OF THE DAY CHAPTER IX NE day about three weeks later Jake dropped in to see us. He had come, he announced, to invite us to dinner at the little flat on the north side where he lived with his mother. It was just to be a family affair, he said, but some one would be there whom he wanted us to meet. He was amusingly reticent about it, grinned mysteriously and when Charley teased him, fled. We accepted with alacrity. The situation was only too apparent. I wish I knew how to set down the peculiar quality of that dinner. So often I find myself curiously moved by situations whose currents and cross-currents never reach the surface at all, yet which are all the more poignant because they are suppressed. Life is full of them. There are times and places when the arteries that carry the life-blood of the spirit come so near the surface that one can see them beating under the skin, can feel them stirring, live and warm, under one's hand. Yet nothing comes through, nothing is broken. It was so with this dinner. The stuff of tragedy was there, already vibrating, beginning to ferment under the surface. I felt it; Charley felt it; Mrs. Gilroy, I know, felt it. Yet nothing happened, nothing at all. Outwardly it was a pleasant, smooth little dinner to introduce Jake's best friend to the girl he was to marry. But with us at the table the future sat, and his face was not good to look upon. When Charley and I rang the bell of the little flat Jake opened the door for us himself. He was nervously cordial, bustled about while we took off our wraps, and ushered us a shade pompously into the little drawing-room. I looked at him with a queer sense of...
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