Her Faithful Knight — page 23: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Moonlight Walk. 19 relations occupied, what was her history, her education— on all these subjects Aylmer was as thoroughly indiffer- ent as only a man of strong and long-repressed feelings, thoroughly in love for the first time, can be. He did not suppose the gray-eyed girl an angel, but he knew that she was the first woman he had ever met capable of inspiring in him an overmastering passion, and that, as a conse- quence, she must be his wife. Through the course of the more or less trivial story which was being represented before him by ladies in ex- travagantly priced gowns, with many smart speeches to deliver which only the older members of the company made audible to the body of the house, Aylmer Read planned in his head a dozen different ways by which he could make himself known to Phyllis Knight, and chatfed at the conventions of the age in which he lived as con- trasted with the free and easy wooing practiced in the brave days of old. Between the third and fourth acts he smoked a cigar- ette in the broad street on which the front of the theatre opened, and thought out the matter. “In a primitive community I should merely have to squat at the door of her father’s wigwam, mention my re- quest, give the old gentleman some little present of oxen, or some other useful trifle, and bear my bride away. As it is, I absolutely stand hour after hour within a few yards of her and dare not even speak to her. It is a monstrous absurdity.” , He strolled along the moonlit thoroughfare, his over- coat open, his hands clasped behind him, thinking. Down a side street, at right angles with the front of the theatre, and which led round to the stage door, a young woman was hurrying; a thick, black veil concealed her features, but the beauty of her figure was clearly shown by her close-fitting blue serge gown, and under her bon-. EOMmiIGdoo KS (CO)