For it is
thinking that makes one miserable.
There were many little things which helped to pass the time away.
Doris went every evening to a certain shop to fetch two eggs that had
been laid that morning. It was necessary for her health that she
should eat eggs beaten up with milk between the first and second
breakfast. We went there, and it was amusing to pick my way through
the streets, carrying her eggs back to the hotel for her. She knew a
few people--strange folk, I thought them--elderly spinsters living
_en pension_ at different hotels. We dined with her friends, and
after dinner Doris sang, and when she had played many things that she
used to play to me in the old days, it was time for her to go to bed,
for she rarely slept after six o'clock, so she said.
"Good-night. Ah, no, the hour is ill," I murmured to myself as I
wended my lonely way, and I lay awake thinking if I had said anything
that would prejudice my chances of winning her, if I had omitted to
say anything that might have inclined her to yield. One lies awake at
night thinking of the mistakes one has made; thoughts clatter in one's
head. Good heavens! how stupid it was of me not to have used a certain
argument. Perhaps if I had spoken more tenderly, displayed a more
Christian spirit--all that paganism, that talk about nymphs and dryads
and satyrs and fauns frightened her.
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