Stella Rosevelt — page 152: what you’re looking at

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

146 | A FATAL MISTAKE. CHAPTER XV. A FATAL MISTAKE; The beautiful maiden cast one startled glance up at her hand- some lover, and then grew colorless as the dress she wore. But when he softly laid his hand upon hers, saying, gently, ‘‘Darling, I have frightened you with my abruptness,” her whole being thrilled beneath his touch, and the rich crimson swept swiftly up over neck, face, and brow, until it lost itself in the fluffy masses of sunny hair which lay upon her forehead. ‘““T could not help it,” he went on, a glad light leaping to his eyes as he saw her blushes; ‘‘and | have known that I love you, my beautiful one, for a long time. Do you remember that it was I who received you into my arms when you were lifted to the deck of our steamer from that frail boat in which you so nearly perished? Do you know that your fair face lay upon my breast, and as I looked down upon you, / knew that no other had ever moved me So strangely and so deeply, despite its pallor and the tale of suffering that I read there? Its power grew upon me during the few days which ,followed and while we were so much together, and when at last we were obliged to part, and | begged a tress of this sunshine *—touching the massive braid which lay over her shoulder almost reverently— ‘‘the picture that you made, with your shy grace and modest beauty as you unhesitatingly clipped it for me, stamped itself indelibly upon my heart, where I have carried it ever since, growing to love it more and more, until I determined to make it always mine by putting it on canvas. I did not know as I should ever see you again, and yet I have been haunted bya feeling that some magnetic influence or strange power of attrac- Gomilcbooks: Go