Out of the Past — page 135: what you’re looking at

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

132 Out of the Past. “That explains it,” mused Robert. “Now I understand the curious phase of mind that I have had often during the last year. You sorceress, fancier of dreams, lover of ideals! So it is your heart throbbing through my fingers? It is a heavenly road to your heart, dear. Now I under- stand why I have never been able to surprise in you the least tinge of regret for the merging of your hopes into my life. It is much to ask of a woman.” She shook her head. “Yes—no less than half a life,” he insisted. “It can- not but be a sacrifice, though nobility hides it even from your own consciousness. And yet, ma mie—you have but bartered after all; it is a barter well worth man’s estate.” Rose raised her pretty, proud head a little straighter on its rounding throat and looked inquiringly at him. He spread his hand out, palm up, and leaned over it, speaking with a lilt in his low voice like the love-note of a thrush: “Voy bartered with the giver of life. You exchanged, sold, threw away world success for a priceless coin, the coin of God, a soul—to be yours to love, yours to mold, yours in the first and the last hour. Your compact is with God, beloved, not with man or the world.” All pride fell away from her. She laid her head on his EORNICOOOKS»€O©