It was as though I were on one
side of the river and they were all on the other. I would think
sometimes how splendid it would be if I could cross--but I couldn't
cross. Every year it became more impossible!"
"You wanted some one to take you out of yourself," I said, and then
shuddered at my own banality. But he took me very seriously.
"I did. Of course," he answered. "But who would bother? They all
thought me impossible. The girls all laughed at me--my own cousins.
Sometimes people tried to help me. They never went far enough. They
gave me up too soon."
"He evidently thinks he was worth a lot of trouble," I thought
irritably. But suddenly he laughed.
"That same doctor one day spoke of me, not knowing that I was near
him; or perhaps he knew and thought it would be good for me. 'Oh,
Trenchard,' he said. 'He ought to be in a nunnery ... and he'd be
quite safe, too. _He'd_ never cause a scandal!' They thought of me as
something not quite human. My father was very old now. Just before he
died, he said: 'I'd like to have had a son!' He never noticed me at
his bedside when he died.
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