Don't you see how foolish that is?"
The young officer admitted that it was very foolish and very true; and
they talked on thus, the elder exercising a charm over the younger such
as he had never known before in the society of any man. In a quarter of
an hour the young man felt as if he had known and trusted and loved his
neighbour all his life; he felt, he confessed, so strongly attracted
that he could have hugged him. He told him about his family, and showed
him the innermost secrets of his heart; and all the while he smoked the
delicious "Joy of Spain," and felt more and more enthralled and
fascinated by the stranger's eyes, which, as he talked, lightened and
glowed more and more as their glance played caressingly about him. He
was beginning to wonder at that, when with some emphatic phrase the
stranger laid his fingers on his knee, upon which a thrill shot through
him as if a woman had touched him. He looked in the stranger's face, and
the wonderful eyes seemed to search to the root of his being, and to
draw the soul out of him. He had a flying thought--"Can it be a woman,
after all, in this strange shape?" and he knew no more .
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