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Episodes before Thirty

he was gone his face and eyes and voice haunted me. His bleak honesty, I think, showed me, without my recognizing it, another standard.

Was it this, I wonder, that made me start a little when, about two in the morning, I heard a stealthy tread coming upstairs, and presently saw Boyde enter the room—carrying his boots in his hand? Was it this, again, that made me feign to be asleep, and a couple of hours later still, when I woke with a shiver, notice, for the first time, a new expression in the face that lay so calmly asleep beside me?

Behind the kindly innocence, I thought, there lay a darker look. It was like a shadow on the features. It increased my feelings of uneasiness, though as yet no definite thought had formulated itself in my mind.

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