Out of the Past — page 113: what you’re looking at

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

1IO Out of the Past. world droned its sleepy song. The shadowy columns of great trees loomed at. the windows, to be passed in the warm, forest-scented air like sentinels asleep at their post. The flowers, rising and falling on the woman’s bosom, filled the carriage with heavy sweetness, and her soft breathing, though he could not hear it, tantalized him with mystery. “It is strange that you will always misunderstand me,” she murmured, regretfully. “For all your chivalry you impute to me only what all other men do—nothing better —you doubt my sincerity, you think me ignorant, design- ing, incapable of a generous affection. Perhaps all that was true only so long ago as before I knew you. But it is not true now—not all—and I am sorry it is not. It is — so hard to be good when you have never been good. | wish I had never seen you. I could be gay then without the nagging thought, ‘He would not have me so. Why did you come to disturb me?” Saline put a clinging hand on his shoulder and raised her face close to his. “Why could you not stay in your monastery and leave me free?” “Leave you free!” “Yes, I said, leave me free. Leave me to my unfet- tered life instead of tying me to you.” “Tying you to me!” “Tying, binding, chaining me, with your splendid face, CONNIE OOO KS, COL