Both were
strangers to him. He read their names, and then the headlines. "A
Hundred-Million-Dollar Love" was the caption, and after the word love
was a dollar sign. Youth and age, beauty and the other thing, two great
fortunes united. He caught the idea and looked at Mary Standish. It was
impossible for him to think of her as Mary Graham.
"I tore that from a paper in Cordova," she said. "They have nothing to
do with me. The girl lives in Texas. But don't you see something in her
eyes? Can't you see it, even in the picture? She has on her wedding
things. But it seemed to me--when I saw her face--that in her eyes were
agony and despair and hopelessness, and that she was bravely trying to
hide them from the world. It's just another proof, one of thousands,
that such unreasonable things do happen."
He was beginning to feel a dull and painless sort of calm, the stoicism
which came to possess him whenever he was confronted by the inevitable.
He sat down, and with his head bowed over it took one of the limp,
little hands that lay in Mary Standish's lap. The warmth had gone out of
it. It was cold and lifeless. He caressed it gently and held it between
his brown, muscular hands, staring at it, and yet seeing nothing in
particular. It was only the ticking of Keok's clock that broke the
silence for a time.
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