A Struggle for a Ring — page 267: what you’re looking at

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

AN AMAZED HUSBAND. 263 As she bent forward in the moonlight the moon shone full on the tranquil loveliness of her face, with its tender eyes and sweet, sad lips. He was startled by it—its ex- quisite beauty was a revelation to him. ‘* Ailie,” he cried, ‘‘how you have changed! Let me look at you.” She stood half shrinking before him; she knew that she had grown fairer since he left her. ‘‘ Why, Ailie,” he said, ‘‘I left you a school-girl, and now you look like % Then he paused. ‘* Like what?” she asked, half shyly, with a lovely faint flush coming over the whiteness of her face—‘‘like what?” ‘* You are like the marble Clytie come to life.” Strange that he should use Lady Ethel’s very words. ‘‘ Let me look at your face, Ailie.” She raised it to his, and the moonlight falling on it, idealized it into perfect beauty. He raised it gently with one hand, and studied it; then he spoke, quietly: ‘‘I left you a child, Ailie; I find you a woman. In your face I read passion—I read a tragedy. What story does it tell? ‘There lies more in those blue eyes than I had dreamed; and the lines round that mouth are not common ones, What has changed you, Ailie?” Her eyes shone with new light. ‘‘Perhaps you will be angry if I tell you,” she said. ‘‘No, that I shall not be. What is it?” ‘“My love has changed me; it has grown so great, so wide, so deep, it fills my heart, and then it fills my face; it shines in my eyes and trembles on my lips; so, because my love is beautiful, it has made my face look—a little beautiful too; it is all. my love.” ‘*Your love!” he said, wonderingly. ‘‘ Love for what?” The fire of the sun, the passion of the poets seemed to pass over her, as she answered : Eomichbooks co