Out of the Past — page 84: what you’re looking at

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

Out of the Past. SI the universe knew no law but the law of delight. Over all a fresh wanton breeze, sweet with the breath of grasses, played from inland in the tenderness of evening. Then the stars came. The night song of the heavens echoed in faraway diapason to the listening ear of her soul. The puritan within her faded into its own shadow to bide its time. It would be no sin to love, when loving did not harm its object or any other being. Had she reasoned—but who reasons when the soul has risen from its depths to claim the being it knows for its own? What heart can measure the ground it has passed, back to the point before dis- closure, and return itself to what it was? The house on the sands had no power to hold her to a fancied duty. The sea had no voice in its warm, sun- kissed level to murmur of super-morality. The sand and the sea and the sky were nature, and, to their utter natu- ralness, Rose was at last reduced to own the magic of the laws of her being. The man and the hour had come. They had closed one door of life to her and had opened another. A week from that day Rose received a scented note from Mme. Vignaud asking her to entertain a few guests at her house the following night, mentioning a goodly sum, and asking her to remain until the following day. CONNICLOOOKS =: