He resisted these
impressions, he shut them out of his mind, but still they worked
into his thoughts, and presently he could find himself asking, even
as he and she went in step striding side by side through the red-
scarred pinewoods in the most perfect outward harmony, whether after
all he was so happily mated as he declared himself to be a score of
times a day, whether he wasn't catching glimpses of reality through
a veil of delusion that grew thinner and thinner and might leave him
disillusioned in the face of a relationship--
Sometimes a man may be struck by a thought as though he had been
struck in the face, and when the name of Mrs. Skelmersdale came into
his head, he glanced at his wife by his side as if it were something
that she might well have heard. Was this indeed the same thing as
that? Wonderful, fresh as the day of Creation, clean as flame, yet
the same! Was Amanda indeed the sister of Mrs. Skelmersdale--
wrought of clean fire, but her sister? . . .
But also beside the inimical aspects which could set such doubts
afoot there were in her infinite variety yet other Amandas neither
very dear nor very annoying, but for the most part delightful, who
entertained him as strangers might, Amandas with an odd twist which
made them amusing to watch, jolly Amandas who were simply
irrelevant.
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