"Was your father injured at all?"
"His head was hurt. They did not know whether the thief had struck
him or whether it was the fall. He had fallen just at the foot of
the stairs. We lived in a bungalow, then, and as I was asleep in my
little room under the eaves, it was thought that he had been trying
to reach me--what is the matter?"
The professor had been unable to control an involuntary shudder.
"Nothing," he said. "Just nerves."
Desire's smile was wistful. "It isn't a pretty story," she said.
"None of the stories I can tell are pretty. That's why I am
different from other people. But I am trying. Perhaps I shall get to
be more like them presently."
The professor banished his dark thoughts with an effort. "God
forbid!" he said cheerfully. "And here comes teat"
CHAPTER XXVII
One wonders what would happen to our admirable muddle of a world, if
even a minority of its inhabitants were suddenly to embrace
consistency. It would, presumably, be a world still, but so changed
that its best friends would not know it. It is because every-body,
everywhere and at all times, acts as they could not logically be
expected to act, that our dear familiar chaos of you-never-can-tell
continues to entertain us.
Had Desire possessed consistency, this quality so jewel-like in its
rarity, she would have realized that, having voluntarily stepped
aside from woman's natural destiny, she should also have ceased to
trouble herself with those feminine doubts and hopes which are
peculiar to it.
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