His Other Wife: A Novel — page 38: what you’re looking at

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

30 THE WIDOW’'S CONFESSION: speak to you as a man who would do you any service consistent with his manhood. I will be your true and loyal friend gladly, but I will not be yours or.any woman’s slave, to speak as I am bidden and against my conscience. My profoundest sympathy is yours, but my honor is my own. Your mother has trusted me with her confidence, and I will perish rather than betray a syllable of it. Do you understand me now? I hope so, for I do not want to hurt or offend you.” Leda was gazing up to his softenod face now with a mute wonder, She had need for surprise. Never had man spoken to her as he spoke, nor so utterly ignored the sorceries of her beauty, to which life had been one un- broken triumphal march. Hitherto it had been hers to enchain and to command the strongest and sternest of men. To behold herself rebuked and chidden like a will- ful child by this homely stranger and low-born plebeian, passed all her conception of the fitness of things, and filled her with a bewilderment that made her doubt the evidence of her senses. His tight grasp on her delicate wrists assured her, however, that it was only too real. For once in her life, she left artifice aside and behaved candidly. Perhaps his indomitable honesty of character and directness of purpose compelled her to frankness, However that was, she looked thoroughly ashamed of her- self, and said, almost humbly, while smiling through her tears : : 3 3 ‘I have behaved absurdly. Pray try to forget it, Mr. Eomicbooks.¢o