That is where, and only where, I am dragged into your
privacy. And, too, for your sake, it would have been better if you had
hit on a different sort of man, one without the background of such
stubborn traditions. You will have to fight them both in him--where
they, too, may come to blame you--and about you. There is a strain of
narrow intolerance through all that blood."
* * * * *
Mina Raff's eyes fluttered like two clear brown butterflies which,
preparing to settle, had been rudely disturbed. Then her mouth was
compressed, it grew firm and firmer, obdurate; as though an internal
struggle, evident in her tense immobility, had been decided against
what was being powerfully urged upon her. A conviction that here, too,
finally, he had failed, was in possession of Lee Randon, when he saw
the determination drain from her face: it assumed a child's expression
of unreasoning primitive dread. She drew a hand across her forehead.
"I shall have to think," she told him; "I am very much upset. It makes
me cold, what you said. Why did you come to New York and talk to me
like this? Oh, I wish Peyton were here; he'd answer you; he isn't a
coward like me."
"Since you are so tired, and I've been so very objectionable, I think
perhaps you had better go back to your hotel," Lee proposed. "It's
after ten." She rose immediately, but had to remain until the waiter
was summoned with their account.
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