Out of the Past — page 31: what you’re looking at

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

28 Out of the Past. rifice his plan and tread the still path of renunciation with Benedict. But a wind in the tree-tops, a sound beyond the walls, who knows what? stirred his pulses. The con- sciousness of hope and power grew big in his heart and youth, with its boundless aspiration, reasserted itself. Benedict had roused himself and was looking down upon his hand, which Robert still held abstractedly. “Now you understand,” he said. “It was my Louise (whom you knew as Sister Clothilde)—it was my Louise who discovered you at St. Cloud. It was she who put you in my arms and demanded protection for you. And so I have loved you as I never loved any other charge or comrade. You are the link between us. You will learn in time that the dead never seem dead to us. I always feel that she may knock at the gates some day and de- mand to see what manner of man | have made of thee. So you pained me when you showed what a gloomy life this has been te you, a life from which you are glad to escape.” Robert could say nothing. He knew that Benedict hoped for a response such as he could have given a few moments ago. Reading the reply in Robert’s downcast face, Benedict changed his attitude with a sigh. “T have told you that I cannot express myself in the natural language of affection because repression has been CORNICLOOOKXS.: