From his abstraction and the
determined set of his jaw, they fancied he must be thinking about his
bridge. Every one had heard of the new cantilever bridge in Canada.
But Alexander was not thinking about his work. After the fourth night
out, when his will suddenly softened under his hands, he had been
continually hammering away at himself. More and more often, when he
first wakened in the morning or when he stepped into a warm place after
being chilled on the deck, he felt a sudden painful delight at being
nearer another shore. Sometimes when he was most despondent, when he
thought himself worn out with this struggle, in a flash he was free
of it and leaped into an overwhelming consciousness of himself. On the
instant he felt that marvelous return of the impetuousness, the intense
excitement, the increasing expectancy of youth.
CHAPTER VI
The last two days of the voyage Bartley found almost intolerable. The
stop at Queenstown, the tedious passage up the Mersey, were things that
he noted dimly through his growing impatience. He had planned to stop in
Liverpool; but, instead, he took the boat train for London.
Emerging at Euston at half-past three o'clock in the afternoon,
Alexander had his luggage sent to the Savoy and drove at once to Bedford
Square. When Marie met him at the door, even her strong sense of the
proprieties could not restrain her surprise and delight. She blushed and
smiled and fumbled his card in her confusion before she ran upstairs.
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