Excerpt from The Mask

You almost expected to hear them say: Let's have another!

It mattered little that he so often lapsed into long silences, for he bore to them an aspect of a hawk hover ing, and they sometimes glanced at him from under their eye-lashes as if they expected him to make a sud den swoop downwards as at the sight of prey, and to provoke this eloquent ¿ight they dropped an occasional remark calculated to draw him. When people expect so much of a man they are bound to be disappointed, and if not disappointed it is because they will so often attrib ute to the man who has thus fallen short of their ex pectations a fascinating if irritating nonchalance.

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