"
She stopped, alarmed at the change of expression in his face. A quick
flush had crossed his cheek; for an instant he had looked suspiciously
into her questioning eyes. But the next moment the idea of his quietly
selecting this simple, unsophisticated girl as the confidant of his
miserable marriage, and the desperation that had brought him there,
struck him as being irresistibly ludicrous and he smiled. It was the
first time that the habitual morbid intensity of his thoughts on that
one subject had ever been disturbed by reaction; it was the first
time that a clear ray of reason had pierced the gloom in which he had
enwrapped it. Seeing him smile, the young girl smiled too. Then they
smiled together vaguely and sympathetically, as over some unspoken
confidence. But, unknown and unsuspected by himself, that smile had
completed his emancipation and triumph. The next moment, when he sought
with a conscientious sigh to reenter his old mood, he was half shocked
to find it gone. Whatever gradual influence--the outcome of these few
months of rest and repose--may have already been at work to dissipate
his clouded fancy, he was only vaguely conscious that the laughing
breath of the young girl had blown it away forever.
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