Her friendship with her cousin Oliver was nobody's concern
but her own, she declared, and all they both wanted was to be let alone.
Meanwhile she had been shaken and a little frightened by the hostile
feeling shown toward her, no less than Oliver, in the first election.
She had taken no part in the second, although she had been staying at
Tallyn all through it, and was present when Oliver was brought in, half
fainting and agonized with pain, after the Hartingfield riot.
* * * * *
Oliver, now lying with closed eyes on his sofa, lived again through the
sensations and impressions of that first hour: the pain--the arrival of
the doctor--the injection of morphia--the blessed relief stealing
through his being--and then Alicia's face beside him. Delivered from the
obsession of intolerable anguish, he had been free to notice with a kind
of exultation the tears in the girl's eyes, her pale tremor and silence.
Never yet had Alicia wept for _him_ or anything that concerned him.
Never, indeed, had he seen her weep in his whole life before. He
triumphed in her tears.
Since then, however, their whole relation had insensibly and radically
changed; their positions toward each other were reversed.
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