Out of the Past — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

Out of the Past. 47 “T know it. But it is not for myself. It is for her. I am afraid for her.” “Dream fears,’ murmured Benedict. “You should not heed them.” “T must. They are the shadow of Truth—a truth in- exorable—born with me, to go down to my grave with me. I have no right to the love of any woman.” ‘“‘Ah—this, then, is the devil pursuing you!” exclaimed Benedict, rising vigilantly erect. “Let us look at the trou- ble in the light of fact, not in the moonshine of fears. All evidence goes to show that you are a legitimate son. There is but one fact against it, and that can be explained easily by one of many possible accidents, such as the world’s diary shows a crowd daily. Had your father fallen ill in a distant land he might have been forced to wait until the traces of his wife and child had disappeared—one in death, the other within the walls of a secluded sisterhood. In any case, he would have searched at the wrong ad- dress (the one in Paris, which your mother did not give Louise), and your mother’s letter giving him her new ad- dress is the one we found without any superscription. Even the reference to secrecy in her letter, which at first seemed damning to me, is explicable upon other grounds, such as a runaway marriage—a union of which you would be a natural result with your fiery nature and high ideals EORNIE OOO Sri