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310
THE SURAKARTA

they did; but it has been growing plain to me now that something drove you to all those things. You showed it in your face yesterday and the night before; I could see it now, if you did not turn your face away. I wonder that I never guessed it before; but perhaps no one ever guessed it before because all the world looked upon you very same way—and I was no different!"

"No!" The girl checked him quickly but gently. She did not raise her head; he could not see her face. "No! That is not true! You believed of me the same as all the rest of them, I know; but—but, though all the rest of them just drove me on, you—you at least tried to check me!"

"But how I did it—the I tried to do it! The assumption—the rotten, cruel assumption in every line I wrote you! The