He wished she would choose some subject of conversation and
talk that he might listen. But she also was unusually silent.
He cut his visit short, very suddenly, and left her, saying that he
hoped to find her at home as a general rule at that hour, quite
forgetting that she would naturally be always out at the cool time
towards evening.
He walked slowly homewards in the dusk, and did not remember to go to
his solitary dinner until nearly nine o'clock. He was not pleased with
himself, but he was involuntarily pleased by something he felt and would
not have been insensible to if he had been given the choice. His old
interest in Maria Consuelo was reviving, and yet was turning into
something very different from what it had been.
He now boldly denied to himself that he was in love and forced himself
to speculate concerning the possibilities of friendship. In his young
system, it was absurd to suppose that a man could fall in love a second
time with the same woman. He scoffed at himself, at the idea and at his
own folly, having all the time a consciousness amounting to certainty,
of something very real and serious, by no means to be laughed at,
overlooked nor despised.
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