Page:The Wheel of Time, Collaboration, Owen Wingrave (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1893).djvu/155

 OWEN WINGRAVE

I

" my honor, you must be off your head!" cried Spencer Coyle, as the young man, with a white face, stood there panting a little, and repeating, "Really, I've quite decided," and "I assure you I've thought it all out." They were both pale, but Owen Wingrave smiled in a manner exasperating to his interlocutor, who, however, still discriminated sufficiently to see that his grimace (it was like an irrelevant leer) was the result of extreme and conceivable nervousness.

"It was certainly a mistake to have gone so far; but that is exactly why I feel I mustn't go farther," poor Owen said, waiting mechanically, almost humbly (he wished not to swagger, and indeed he had nothing