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James, Henry, 1843-1916

"The Beast in the Jungle"


"You take your 'feelings' for granted. You were to suffer your
fate. That was not necessarily to know it."
"How in the world--when what is such knowledge but suffering?"
She looked up at him a while in silence. "No--you don't
understand."
"I suffer," said John Marcher.
"Don't, don't!"
"How can I help at least THAT?"
"DON'T!" May Bartram repeated.
She spoke it in a tone so special, in spite of her weakness, that
he stared an instant--stared as if some light, hitherto hidden, had
shimmered across his vision. Darkness again closed over it, but
the gleam had already become for him an idea. "Because I haven't
the right--?"
"Don't KNOW--when you needn't," she mercifully urged. "You
needn't--for we shouldn't."
"Shouldn't?" If he could but know what she meant!
"No--it's too much."
"Too much?" he still asked but with a mystification that was the
next moment of a sudden to give way. Her words, if they meant
something, affected him in this light--the light also of her wasted
face--as meaning ALL, and the sense of what knowledge had been for
herself came over him with a rush which broke through into a
question.


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