Her Faithful Knight — page 65: what you’re looking at

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

A Ruined Life. 61 possibility of breaking my heart, ruining my life, betray- ing and deserting me, in so vile and cold-blooded a man- ner ?” “As I stood by the table looking across at him I per- ceived that he had tears in his eyes as he stared into his empty glass. “*T was thinking,’ he said, ‘of Swinburne’s wonderful lines: “For love has no abiding, and dies before the _ kiss.” How true they are, and how sad that love, the sweetest thing on earth, should be so short-lived!’ “He had not even heard me. “Dorothy, as I looked at him with new feelings in my mind, I seemed to understand him for the first time. Suffering made me clever. I began to realize the awful mistake I had made in supposing that this vicious, shal- low sentimentalist was a man of heart and feeling. There was nothing to be hoped for from him, and yet I had put myself utterly in his power. Just because he was a man and I was a woman he could injure me beyond all repara- tion, and I could do nothing. “Presently, while I was still watching him, Sergius’s head dropped upon the table, and he fell fast asleep. “T must have lost my senses, I think, for I can remem- ber hardly anything until I found myself at the railway station without my hat, crying out wildly that I wanted to get back to London to my sister that very night. My address was found on an envelope in my pockct, and I was taken back to my lodgings, where I lay danger- ously ill with brain fever for six terrible weeks. Long before I recovered Sergius had left the town with the rest of the company. My illness upset his nerves, so my landlady informed me. He had left five pounds in her hands, with instructions to keep me as long as possible. When the money was gone she was to apply to him, Eomichoo S (C@)