His Other Wife: A Novel — page 37: what you’re looking at

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

THE WIDOWS CONFESSION. 29 ‘You wil not?’—this with a tender reproachfulness that hurt him like a stab. ‘*T will not,” he replied; but the pain of saying it had whitened his strong face. Leda dropped her face in her hands, at sobbed pas- sionately as a young child. ‘There are men who smile at cannon-balls and rifle- shots on a battle-field, that are the veriest cowards in presence of a weeping woman. And a beautiful woman in tears is a power more dangerous to a good man’s honor than a whole army of tempting devils. Gordon Warren had no data of experience on which to base his calculations concerning Miss Morgan’s present conduct; nor would any amount of experience have altered the painfulness of his position, But he was not: made of the stuff to let impulse dictate to principle, neither of such as could stand calmly by and see a woman shaken with grief. _Being intensely natural and healthy in all his feelings and sympathies, he behaved now -exactly as if caste and conventionalism were unknown forces in the world; he forgot everything save that he was a strong man and Leda a weak girl, threatened with the saddest misfortunes in life —orphanage and poverty. . Crossing the narrow space which divided him from her, Warren took firm hold of both her wrists and drew her hards from her convulsed and tearful face. ‘‘Look into my eyes,” said he, gently, ‘‘and let me Eomicbooks sco in =)