The Price He Paid — page 174: what you’re looking at

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

HIS FIRST LOVE. 165 Raven, passionately. “The tale must be told, once for all. Imust now putinto words that secret which you have long known, the secret which has been - mine since I first looked into those sunny, childish eyes. Soon, very soon after that, I heard from your own lips that you loved another. I felt that a man thirty years your senior, with hair showing streaks of gray, would incur the terrible curse of ridicule, if he confessed to you his ardent, unreciprocated attachment, and I, by Heaven! I vowed none should ridicule me. But to-day I saw that you trembled for my safety, that you would have rushed into the danger yourself only to remain at my side —and now you do not dare repeat those words, be- cause you feel they convey a lie which would cost us both our future happniess. Now, at last, let things be made clear between us. I love you, Gabrielle, and I have fought against my love, calling to my aid all my strength and all my pride. The dream should be over, I said, and the presumptuous word has cost me dearly. When I meant forcibly to sub- due and crush out the passion within me, it rose with tenfold, irresistible might, and taught me to know its power. I behaved toward you with harsh, cold reserve, wrapping myself in it as ina mantle. I sought a rescue in separation, in my work, in the battle I am ever waging with all the hostile elements arrayed against me—in vain! You must be mine, or I must let you go from me forever. Any third course would bring destruction on us both. Answer me, Gabrielle! Say, whom do you love? For whom did your heart beat so anxiously a little while ago, and what thought aroused the apprehension and tenderness I read in your looks? Speak; I await vour decision.” | He stood before her, pale and eager, as though the verdict were to be one of life or death. Gabrielle listened in a sort of stupor to this passionate out- burst, which found but too ready an echo in her own heart. Raven was faithfully describing her own experience. She, too, had fought and wrestled with her love; she, too, had sought to fly from a power so strong that no escape was possible. Eomichooks. co