Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/38

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34
PORTRAIT OF A MAN

you what I mean.

Or go, as perhaps after all is wiser, simply to a beautiful place for a week's holiday, forgetting me and anything I have said.

Or, as is perhaps wiser still, don't go at all. In any case I am your debtor for our delightful conversation of yesterday.—Sincerely yours, James Maradick.


What Maradick had said occurred. As the days passed the impression faded. Harkness hoped that he would meet Maradick again. He did not do so. During the first days he watched for him in the streets and in the clubs. He devised plans that would give him an excuse to meet him once more; the simplest of all would have been to invite him to luncheon. He knew that Maradick would come. But his own distrust of himself now as always forbade him. Why should Maradick wish to gee him again? He had been pleasant to him, yes, hut he was of the type that would be agreeable to any one, kindly, genial, and forgetting you im-