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… he went to dress. Dinah backed against the bath, the wisdom of centuries in her little solemn mask, till John’s fluttering shirt-tails broke it all up. She leaped, grabbed them, and swung into John’s calves. John kicked back. She retired under the bulge of the porcelain and told him what she thought of him. He sat down and laughed. |
This is from “The Woman in his Life” (1928) collected in Limits and Renewals, a story of the redeeminmg power of love, between a troubled man and a little dog. Johhn Marden, a young engineer, has come back from the Western Front to run his business, scarred by the terrors of tunneling beneath enemy trenches in constant fear of being blown up or buried alive. His sanity is saved by Dinah, the woman in his life, a gift from his perceptive servant. She becomes his much loved companion, and when he has to overcome his fear to save her, trapped in a deep burrow, he finds that he is free of his terrors. |
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