I answered, laughing, with an unnecessary tinge of defiance in my tone.
It would have been so much easier to cry. I thought, "If John would only
try to look cross again!" as he did in the morning--anything but that
expression of grieved and compassionate disapproval with which he sat,
talking so earnestly to me, for the last few moments in that dark car. I
thought he was cruel. He was trying to make me _think_ and I was trying
so hard _not_ to think! I felt a childish desire to scream out. Then,
when the signal for starting rang, and John took my hand an instant, in
parting, looking down at me with his kind, familiar eyes, the impulse
swept up strong within me to beg him to take me out of that dreadful car
and take me back home, and I would be good, oh, so good, and "prosy,"
yes, and "humdrum," and never ask to go on any more missions to forlorn
pieces of land sticking out into the water.
So there must have been a wild extravagance in the airy recklessness of
tone with which I bade John "good-bye." A sense of utter helplessness
came over me as he turned and went out.
I observed, particularly, but two passengers in the car. One was a man,
very much bandaged as to his head, who sat gazing into the coal-stove,
which occupied the centre of the car, with weakly meditative, burnt-out
eyes.
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