The Man in Possession — page 190: what you’re looking at

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

THE MAN IN POSSESSION. 185 I might have broken my chains, I might have assisted myself, I might even have grasped happiness. I wonder sometimes how I resisted. There seemed so much suffering in life and I was so young, and—but I mustn’t speak of it. It is all over. I did find courage. I sent him away. The one human being on all the face of the earth that I cared for, trusted, loved. Six months later Iwasa free woman. Death cut my chain of misery for me. Fortune was flung at my feet. The world smiled at me. But of him, my friend, I have never heard from that hour. The world seems such a small place till one wants to find one face in it. Then it is so hopelessly, pitilessly large.” . ‘‘ But you may meet yet,” said Kate gently. Her own eyes were dim. The quiet, unforced pathos of the story touched her more deeply than her com- panion imagined. ‘‘Qh,” said Mrs Lafaye presently, ‘‘I have said that to myself very often, but I begin to feel very hopeless.” Two or three tears rolled down and fell upon her clasped hands. She looked at them glittering there in the firelight. ‘‘The world thinks I am a happy woman,” she said. ‘‘It envies and marvels at me. And after all I am only a: woman whose heart is em pty—whose very soul is sick with longing for the sound of one voice—the sight of one face. It sounds . so—odd—to say it.” ‘*No,” said Kate. ‘‘It only sounds very pathetic. - « . And as you Say, difficult to believe.” ‘‘Because I have so much, you mean. But that COMicloe (Sri C(O)