Out of the Past — page 169: what you’re looking at

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

166 Out of the Past. gate of death and soon all news of my bride ceased. As my father still hung between life and death, I sent my nearest friend to Paris. Before word could come from him, I fell crazily ill, and when again there was any sense in my empty brain, Amy had disappeared as though she had never been. That was my sorrow—a frightful uncertainty which, even now at this late day, has often waked me at night with a clammy fright of what it may have been that befel her. There are natures so infinitely caressing that they twine about your heart in tendrils that live a man’s life out. From these there is no escape. If your Rose was one of these, I pity you, my boy.” The look in Robert’s face was such as a man hates to see. Winthrop said with a woman’s tact: “I have looked for you from that day to this. Tell me of your mother. Now that her son is here, she seems at my side once more.” In telling the tale, Robert freed himself of the intensity of his mood. Often when the terrors of his early life suggested themselves Winthrop grew hot and uneasy, exclaiming: “Absurd! Monstrous!” And again: “It was a lie! You were more honestly born than many another in wed- lock. You were born in wedlock of love!’ It seemed to Robert that Winthrop was literally re-living his life with him. CONNICOOOKS. COM