The Opposite House: A Novel — page 145: what you’re looking at

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

140 Lhe Opposite House. Gerrald’s. It was he standing there in the bright moonlight. And the woman before him, sitting so carelessly on the bench, with her hands clasped around her knee—was not that Heloise ? A pang of bitter anguish pierced the heart of the young baroness. Her pure soul rebelled. She longed to make her escape, yet could not help pleading with heart-rending sorrow: “Stay, uncle; I must see whether he has entirely forgotten me.” ‘“ Heloise !” cried Gerrald, with vehement passion, ‘do not upbraid me fora love which I neither will nor candeny. You charmed me as a woman rarely has power to do; you fettered my soul and held to my lips the sweet potion which makes a man forget the world; you rendered me joyous and happy by your love. But you never filled my heart with that bliss- ful consciousness of purity bestowed by that other woman, whom I loved with my whole soul, and whom I can never forget, though Brand were right a thousand times over in saying that she trifled with me—that she never loved me. Marie wp- lifted me, opened a new life before me, and when the waves again surged around, striving to drag me down to the abyss of ruin, she piti- lessly let me sink. I once deserted you, Heloise, because I was struggling upward to a height which I was never to attain. I wrenched my passion for Comicbook<s