" "Oh, stop joking, please! Can't you answer
seriously?"
"I really mean it."
"Mean what?"
"That you are prettier than Matilda." "Is that the way you are
faithful to her?"
"Oh, that was five years ago. Now there is somebody else I am
faithful to."
She was silent. Her cheeks glowed
"Why don't you ask who that somebody is?"
"Because I don't care. What do I care? And please don't talk like
that. I mean what I say. You must promise me never to talk like
that," she said, gravely
During the following few days Dora firmly barred all more or less
intimate conversation. She treated me with her usual friendly
familiarity, but there was something new in her demeanor,
something that seemed to say, "I don't deny that I enjoy our talks,
but that's all the more reason why you must behave yourself."
The story of my childhood seemed legitimate enough, so she let
me tell her bits of it, and before she was aware of it she was
following my childish love-affair with the daughter of one of my
despotic school-teachers, my struggles with Satan, and my early
dreams of marriage.
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