Bryan Summerhay was neither more curious nor more complicated than
those of his own sex who would condemn him for getting into the midnight
express from Edinburgh with two distinct emotions in his heart--a
regretful aching for the girl, his cousin, whom he was leaving behind,
and a rapturous anticipation of the woman whom he was going to rejoin.
How was it possible that he could feel both at once? "Against all the
rules," women and other moralists would say. Well, the fact is, a man's
heart knows no rules. And he found it perfectly easy, lying in his bunk,
to dwell on memories of Diana handing him tea, or glancing up at him,
while he turned the leaves of her songs, with that enticing mockery in
her eyes and about her lips; and yet the next moment to be swept from
head to heel by the longing to feel Gyp's arms around him, to hear her
voice, look in her eyes, and press his lips on hers. If, instead of
being on his way to rejoin a mistress, he had been going home to a
wife, he would not have felt a particle more of spiritual satisfaction,
perhaps not so much. He was returning to the feelings and companionship
that he knew were the most deeply satisfying spiritually and bodily
he would ever have. And yet he could ache a little for that red-haired
girl, and this without any difficulty. How disconcerting! But, then,
truth is.
From that queer seesawing of his feelings, he fell asleep, dreamed of
all things under the sun as men only can in a train, was awakened by the
hollow silence in some station, slept again for hours, it seemed, and
woke still at the same station, fell into a sound sleep at last that
ended at Willesden in broad daylight.
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