FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80  
81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   >>  
t I am working for you. "ZOE LE BARON." That was all. Just a girlish, constrained letter, hardly hinting at the hot tears that had been shed for many weary nights, coyly telling of the impatient young love and all the maidenly shame. David permitted himself to read it only once. Then a sudden resolution was born-a heroic one. Before he got the letter he was a crushed and unsophisticated boy; when he had read it, and absorbed its full significance, he became suddenly a man, capable of a great sacrifice. "I return your letter," he wrote, without superscription, "and thank you for your anxiety about me. But the truth is, I had forgotten all about you in my trouble. You were not in the least to blame for what happened. I might have known I would come to such an end. You thought I was good, of course; but it is not easy to find out the life of a young man. It is rather mortifying to have a private letter sent here, because the warden reads them all. I hope you will enjoy yourself this winter, and hasten to forget one who had certainly forgotten you till reminded by your letter, which I return. "Respectfully, "DAVID CULROSS." That night some deep lines came into his face which never left it, and which made him look like a man of middle age. He never doubted that his plan would succeed; that, piqued and indignant at his ingratitude, she would hate him, and in a little time forget he ever lived, or remember him only to blush with shame at her past association with him. He saw her happy, loved, living the usual life of women, with all those things that make life rich. For there in the solitude an understanding of deep things came to him. He who thought never to have a wife grew to know what the joy of it must be. He perceived all the subtle rapture of wedded souls. He learned what the love of children was, the pride of home, the unselfish ambition for success that spurs men on. All the emotions passed in procession at night before him, tricked out in palpable forms. A burst of girlish tears would dissipate whatever lingering pity Zoe felt for him. How often he said that! With her sensitiveness she would be sure to hate a man who had mortified her. So he fell to dreaming of her again as moving among happy and luxurious scenes, exquisitely clothed, with flowers on her bosom and jewels on her neck; and he saw men loving her, and was glad, and saw her at last loving the best of them, and told himself in
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80  
81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   >>  



Top keywords:
letter
 

return

 

forgotten

 

forget

 

things

 
thought
 
girlish
 

loving

 
scenes
 

luxurious


association

 

living

 
moving
 

piqued

 
indignant
 

ingratitude

 
succeed
 
doubted
 

jewels

 

remember


flowers

 

clothed

 

solitude

 

exquisitely

 

dreaming

 

emotions

 

passed

 

procession

 

tricked

 

lingering


dissipate

 
palpable
 

success

 

ambition

 

perceived

 
subtle
 

rapture

 
wedded
 

unselfish

 
sensitiveness

children
 

learned

 
mortified
 
understanding
 

unsophisticated

 

absorbed

 
crushed
 

resolution

 
heroic
 

Before