The Man in Possession — page 75: what you’re looking at

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

70 _ THE MAN IN POSSESSION, took his way homewards through the quiet streets and under the black and starless sky, thinking to him- self how small a thing may affect a man’s life, and alter its whole tenor and circumstance by its very insignificance. ‘‘T wished her health, peace, and prosperity,” he thought. ‘‘The first is not in my power to give, but the last—well, it is a dangerous experiment; but I’ve begun, and now I don’t want to go back.” He pushed back the fair curly hair that he had dragged over his eyes, and laughed a little as at some amusing reflection. } ‘‘How prettily she said that ‘Why have you told me a falsehood—Tom Smith?’ Heaven bless you, Kate. I would rather have wooed you fairly, straight- forwardly if I could, but the fates were against it, and now I don’t want to confess my folly until ’'m quite sure of pardon. And so—” he squared his shoul- ders, anda smile, tender, bashful, yet half triumphant touched his lips, then faded into gravity once again. “And so,” he continued, ‘‘I’ll work now in real, serious earnest. Truly, as the plays have it, ‘The plot thickens. We must dissemble.’” (Sri C(O) COMicloe