human
It would delay you to go round to our house first, Blair explained.
gpt
You forget we live in the slums. And Nannie's in a hurry, so I sent her directly home. She doesn't mind going by herself, you know. Look here, you two girls have been away an abominably long time! I've been terribly lonely--without Nannie.
human
In these empty, meaningless weeks at the Works, Blair Maitland had suddenly stumbled against the negations of life. Hitherto, he had known only the easy and delightful assents of Fate; this was his first experience with the inexorable _No_. A week after the girls went East, he admitted to himself that, had David been out of the way, he would undoubtedly have fallen in love with Elizabeth.
gpt
As it is, of course I haven't, he declared. Night after night in those next weeks, as he idled moodily about Mercer's streets, or, lounging across the bridge, leaned on the handrail and watched the ashes from his cigar flicker down into the unseen current below, he said the same thing:
human
I am not in love with her, and I sha'n't allow myself to be. I won't let it go any farther. But David is no man for a girl like Elizabeth to marry. Then he would fall to thinking just what kind of man Elizabeth ought to marry. Such reflections proved, so he assured himself, how entirely he knew that she belonged to David. Sometimes he wondered sullenly whether he had not better leave Mercer before she came back? Perhaps it was his god who made this suggestion; if so, he did not recognize a divine voice. He always decided against such a course. It would be cowardly, he told himself, to keep away from Elizabeth.
gpt
I will see her when she gets home, just as usual. To stay away might make her think that I was--afraid. And I am not in the least, because I am not in love with her, and I shall not allow myself to be.