Stella Rosevelt — page 303: what you’re looking at

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

“7 LOVE HIM STILL.” 297 you have become so necessary to me, that if you should send me away without hope, the future would hold nothing to tempt me, nothing to make life worth the living. When I held you in my arms last Wednesday, and believed that your life had been endangered—when you lay unconscious upon my breast, close to my heart, so white and still, so exactly as if you were dead, I said to myself that I could not, I cared not to live, if -you were taken from me. My love, look up into my eyes, lay your hand in mine, and tell me you will give yourself to me.” He stopped in the path and waited for her answer—waited for her to lay her hand in his, as he had asked her to do, and bid him to hope and be the happiest man in the universe, But her beautiful golden head was bent, as if weighted with some heavy care or sorrow. ‘The star-like face was pale and downcast, and the lovely eyes, into which he longed to read an answering tale of love, were hidden by their white lids and curling lashes. ‘<Star,” he breathed, a note of keen pain in his pele “do : not tell me that I must give up my bright dream of joy.” ‘‘Mr. Meredith,” she answered, looking up at him with sudden resolution, ‘‘forget for a little while what you have just said to me, and listen, while I read you a page out of my own heart.” ; A look of suffering came into his eyes, his lips trembled, ‘and he breathed heavily, but he answered : ‘‘T cannot ‘/orge/,’ but I will ‘listen,’ as you wish.” ‘‘Nearly two years ago,” Star began, ‘‘I came to America in the Perhaps you remember that it was lost at sea. I was one of the few who were saved, and afterward picked up by the ——, another homeward bound vessel. As I was lifted from the life- boat to the deck of the noble craft, I fainted from exhaustion, and fell into the arms of a stranger, who bore me to a State- room and gave me into the care of a stewardess. I met hima , a vessel that sailed from Liverpool to New York. comiebooks