A Daughter of Delilah — page 82: what you’re looking at

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

THE TONGUE OF THE TEMPTRESS. 73 ‘‘IT spoil you?’’ he said, rapturously. ‘‘Oh, Isabel, I am afraid at times that I shall wake to find this happiness an illusion !’’ The pace of the ponies had been checked, and they were traveling steadily in the direction of Harlem. ‘*Do you love me so much, then?’’ she asked, softly. ‘‘Tsabel—Isabel! Why will you madden me? Do you not see that Iam bound up in you eternally for good or evil? No matter how desperate the sacrifice Iam called upon to make, I shall deem it a trifle light as air if I can but call you my own! I will not deceive you, Isabel. By wedding you, I shall lose my father’s friendship—I can call it noth- ing more—but, what is of more value still, my sister’s love. Our meetings cannot longer be kept secret. I have to-day been reproached by a man whom I once called friend, but who I would now shoot as coolly as if he were 99 a dog if he dared ‘Tf he dared?’’ she repeated, her eyes scintillating. ‘‘What has he already dared to do?’’ ‘‘My darling, it does not matter.” “T say that I will know,”’ Isabel Russell replied. ‘‘Oh, it is cruel that I should be so persecuted because I have had to earn my living—because I have been a common danseuse!”’ She affected to cry softly, and Alston’s disengaged arm stole round her slender waist. “The moment a woman stands before the foot-lights,”’ she went on, with a dash of anger, “‘her virtue is gone. She is a creature either to be sneered at, or made the sport of every man who likes to pour his insulting words in her ears. If she is handsome, women hate her, and the Gomicboo CS