Page:Encounters (Bowen).djvu/172

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THE SHADOWY THIRD


injustice much more than anybody who was shot or stabbed."

"Are these the sort of things you think about all day?"

She looked at his white face, and laid her head against his shoulder and began to whimper. "Oh, Martin, don't be angry. I am so frightened, I am so frightened."

"Hush!"

"We're not safe and I don't believe we're even good. It can't be right to be so happy when there isn't enough happiness in the world to go round. Suppose we had taken somebody else's happiness, somebody else's life. . . ."

"Pussy, hush, be quiet. I forbid you. You've been dreaming. You've been silly, imagining these horrors. My darling, there's no sin in happiness. You shouldn't play with dreadful thoughts. Nothing can touch us."

"I sometimes feel the very room hates us!"

"Nothing can touch us," he reiterated, looking defiantly into the corners of the room.

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