Her Faithful Knight — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

46 A Story of London. mean! To be taken to and from the theatre, to know when one came out, tired and hot, into the night air, some one would be waiting to wrap a shawl round one’s shoulders, draw one’s arm through his and take one home! Or, on clear moonlight nights, away from he ugly theatre and the ugly town, with its chimneys and its factories, to the open country, sometimes, best of all, to the sea! The change from the flare of the gas lights, the dust, the paint, the sneers and stories of the women, to the cool, pure moonlight shining on the waves as they break in upon the shore. “Can’t you fancy what all this would mean? Some one talking poetry, literature, prettily turning compli- ments, or bright nonsense, some one to buy you fresh flowers daily, and books and bonbons, some one with whom to take long country rambles, talking about alll the things one likes best, and, most of all, dear, of you. Yes, you must not shake your head like that. I know it has all been a miserable, ghastly failure, but he has never tired of hearing and asking questions about you. He made me angry by stealing a portrait of you from my al- bum and refusing to give it back, and he would sit con- stantly staring at your picture in my rooms without speaking, until I kept it hidden away from jealousy. “You see, I fell in love with him; but, Dolly, wasn’t it natural? He was always so gentle and so kind. He could not make companions of the men in the company, he said. He had a contempt for actors, which I was ready to share. He did not act very well himself, in- deed, he did not seem to try to; but he was so handsome that at every town the stupid girls, factory hands and all sorts of women, used to send him the most wonderful ill-spelt love-letters and watch for him to come out of the stage door. It was a petty triumph, perhaps, to find that he had eyes for no one but me. He seemed not to Eomichbooks