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Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920

"Between the Dark and the Daylight"

There was a
jam of people; but this girl--I've understood it was she--looked as
much alone as if there were nobody else there. She might have been a
startled doe in the North Woods suddenly coming out on a
twenty-thousand-dollar camp, with a lot of twenty-million-dollar people
on the veranda."
"And you wanted to do her as The Startled Doe," I said. "Good selling
name."
"Don't reduce it to the vulgarity of fiction. I admit it would be a
selling name."
"Go on, Wanhope," Rulledge puffed impatiently. "Though I don't see how
there could be another soul in the universe as constitutionally scared
of men as Braybridge is of women."
"In the universe nothing is wasted, I suppose. Everything has its
complement, its response. For every bashful man, there must be a bashful
woman," Wanhope returned.
"Or a bold one," Minver suggested.
"No; the response must be in kind to be truly complemental. Through the
sense of their reciprocal timidity they divine that they needn't be
afraid."
"Oh! _That's_ the way you get out of it!"
"Well?" Rulledge urged.


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