Alpha Book

The days were longer now than they had been during the time when he had
visited her every day, and the lamp was not yet on the table when Orsino
entered the small sitting-room. Maria Consuelo was standing by the
window, looking out into the street, and her right hand rested against
the pane while her fingers tapped it softly but impatiently. She turned
quickly as he entered, but the light was behind her and he could hardly
see her face. She came towards him and held out her hand.
"It is very kind of you to have come so soon," she said, as she took her
old accustomed place by the table.
Nothing was changed, excepting that the two or three new books at her
elbow were not the same ones which had been there two months earlier. In
one of them was thrust the silver paper-cutter with the jewelled handle,
which Orsino had never missed. He wondered whether there were any reason
for the unvarying sameness of these details.
"Of course I came," he said. "And as there was time to-day, I came at
once.


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