"Where's the police?" He asked himself the question indignantly and
contemptuously. "Can't they see what's going on under their noses? Or
don't they _wish_ to see it? Or have they been paid _not_ to see it?
Funny thing if every respectable married man is to be bothered like
this--three times in fifty yards!"
These incessant solicitations affected his nerves. So much so, indeed,
that he cursed the impudence of one woman and called her a rude name.
She did not seem to mind. While he was still in the generous afterglow
produced by a bit of plain-speaking, another one had taken her place.
With head high and shoulders squared he marched on, subject for some
distance to a purely nervous irritation, together with a disagreeably
potent memory of powdered cheeks, reddened lips, and a searching
perfume.
Then he thought of his wife, and instantly he had so vivid a
presentation of her image that it obliterated all newer visual
records. What a lady she looked when bidding him farewell at the
station. He had watched her till the train carried him out of sight--a
slender graceful figure; pale face and sad eyes; a fluttering
handkerchief and a waved parasol; then nothing at all, except a
sudden sense of emptiness in his heart.
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