Do
you think there can be anything genuine about such desires, so easily
turned aside?"
"Oh, I do not know," said Gracie, hastily. "Why do you ask me such
things? Did not I tell you I was not good? Ask those people who are
unlike all others. Why don't you ask this Joy? She could tell you, I
presume. I can tell you nothing, save that this is a very strange world,
not half so nice as I once thought it, and I don't like to think about
things."
How _different_ he was from other young men with whom she had spent
fifteen minutes many a time in gay banter! This was, after all, the
thought uppermost in her mind at the moment. Nice Christian men, of whom
her father spoke well, and who, people said, were young men to be proud
of. It seemed to her that she knew them by the dozens, yet with which
one of them had she ever carried on such a conversation as this? With
which one could she have attempted any thing of the kind, without
leading him to suppose that she was taking leave of her senses?
She recalled some of the gay words that she had spoken with these
others, and tried, hurriedly, to decide why it would sound to her
perfectly absurd to talk with Alfred Ried in that way. However, she did
not want to talk with him; he was too full of questionings.
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