The Face of Rosenfeld — page 177: what you’re looking at

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

170 THE FACE OF ROSENFEL. despair. He muttered as he walked, and crushed, with his left hand, a paper in the pocket of his thread-bare coat—a paper on which a delicate feminine hand had traced these words: «¢ Prove her a waif, then. If they marry I shall hold you personally responsible!” ‘Doubtless the poor girl’s last hope,” thought the melancholy man, ‘‘and I have stamped the life out of it.”’ At. that very instant, however, Julian Maxey, the artist, was making of these words a hollow mockery. He had come back into the room with her and had closed the door. That rapid pulse, that Doctor Lamar had warned him was so likely to get the better of his ~ discretion, was at its height. He began to tell her, im- pulsively, passionately, before he fully realized it. She turned so white and speechless that his heart al- _most ceased beating. ‘The thought that he had at last uttered the irrevocable, fatal words, came to him too late to prevent the utterance of his hope and his long- ing; but not too late to make the flow of his eloquence tremble and die on his lips. He became as mute as she, and almost as pale. For a moment they stood close to- gether by the window, in the fading light from the western sky, looking into each other’s eyes with a mutual terror. ‘TI have frightened you,” stammered Maxey. An undeniable fact, but it was all the artist could think to say at that moment. : Still he could not stand inactive. He sought to take the dainty hand which timidly shrank from the contact. He grew more persistent when he encountered opposi- tion, and cencentrated all his energies on the capturing