Penniman exceeding pleasure.
"I shall feel sadly taken in if you don't."
"I shall have to, to make up for this. This isn't at all brilliant,
you know."
Mrs. Penniman mused a little, as if there might be some way of making
out that it was; but she had to give up the attempt, and, to carry
off the awkwardness of failure, she risked a new inquiry.
"Do you mean--do you mean another marriage?"
Morris greeted this question with a reflexion which was hardly the
less impudent from being inaudible. "Surely, women are more crude
than men!" And then he answered audibly:
"Never in the world!"
Mrs. Penniman felt disappointed and snubbed, and she relieved herself
in a little vaguely-sarcastic cry. He was certainly perverse.
"I give her up, not for another woman, but for a wider career!"
Morris announced.
This was very grand; but still Mrs. Penniman, who felt that she had
exposed herself, was faintly rancorous.
"Do you mean never to come to see her again?" she asked, with some
sharpness.
"Oh no, I shall come again; but what is the use of dragging it out?
I have been four times since she came back, and it's terribly awkward
work. I can't keep it up indefinitely; she oughtn't to expect that,
you know. A woman should never keep a man dangling!" he added
finely.
"Ah, but you must have your last parting!" urged his companion, in
whose imagination the idea of last partings occupied a place inferior
in dignity only to that of first meetings.
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