Читать книгу Round the Bend онлайн

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You can be very, very cruel just by acting with restraint, and everyone will say what a good chap you are.

You can kill somebody just by doing nothing, and be complimented at the inquest.

You can be absolutely right all through. And what you'll get for it is a memory of happiness that might have been, if you had acted a bit kinder.

I might have dozed a bit that night--I don't know. I know that I heard every hour strike from a church clock outside my room.

I had to go and report to the Company next day, and that, of course, was at Morden, just by her house. I had to go down again to the same Underground station, and there were the same red buses rattling the same diesel engines at the bus stop by the entrance where we had said good-bye. She had said, "I'll be terribly lost without you." She had been.

I stood staring at the place by the Metroland poster where I had stood holding her in my arms, stood there in a daze. I had told her that it was only for two years. She had said miserably, "It sounds like as if it was for ever." It had been.

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