We have heard nothing from him. We
don't know where he is, nor what his life has been. Suppose--oh, I
can't bear to think of it."
He put his hands on her cheeks and turned her face so that he could
look squarely into her eyes. He saw the trouble there, the agony of
doubt.
"Look at me, Christine," he said gently. The light in his eyes held
her. "It doesn't matter what he was, what he is or what he may become.
I love you, as I have always loved you. You are going to be my wife.
That is the end of it all."
His heart was sinking, however, under the weight of the thing he knew,
the thing she was yet to know. He would have given all he possessed in
the world for the power to shield her from the blow that was yet to
fall.
There came swiftly to mind the hazy, indistinct interior of a
dressing-tent, with its mysterious lights and strange people, just as
it had appeared to him on that first, never-to-be-forgotten night. He
felt himself again emerging from that state of insensibility to look
upon the queer, unfamiliar things that were to become quite real to
him. And out of the phantasmalian group of objects there grew a single
slim, well-remembered figure in red, to dazzle him with her strange,
unexpected beauty, and to soothe him with an unspoken faith that began
then and had not yet faltered in her lovely eyes.
Pages:
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467