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?©, 1861-1896

"The Social Cancer"

"Be
quiet now and I'll read it to you. I'll leave out your fine phrases
in order not to make a martyr of you."
Raising the paper to the height of her eyes so that the youth might
not see her face, she began: "'My'--but I'll not read what follows
that because it's not true."
Her eyes ran along some lines.

"'My father wishes me to go away, in spite of all my pleadings. 'You
are a man now,' he told me, 'and you must think about your future
and about your duties. You must learn the science of life, a thing
which your fatherland cannot teach you, so that you may some day be
useful to it. If you remain here in my shadow, in this environment
of business affairs, you will not learn to look far ahead. The
day in which you lose me you will find yourself like the plant
of which our poet Baltazar tells: grown in the water, its leaves
wither at the least scarcity of moisture and a moment's heat dries
it up. Don't you understand? You are almost a young man, and yet you
weep!' These reproaches hurt me and I confessed that I loved you.


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