The Price He Paid — page 310: what you’re looking at

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

REJOICING AT MAX’S HOME. 301 dear young lady, I would rather have turned the deadly weapon against my own breast than have seen him fall.” : “ He forced the duel on you?” asked the girl, ina low voice. “I have long suspected it.” “Yes, he forced it on me in a way which left me no alternative. Had I known—but his pistol was so steadily leveled at me, how could I guess that at the decisive moment he would avert its aim? My hand shook, and sought so to direct its shot as only to wound. This very agitation proved fatal—my bullet pierced the heart of my former friend!” Gabrielle shivered, but the weary, concentrated pain in his voice disarmed her. “ Arno bore you no ill-will,” she replied. “But a few hours before his death, he related to me all his past; and then I learned what you had really been to him—as much, perhaps, as he to you.” “And yet he could require that of me!” said Brunnow, with mournful bitterness. “He desired ~ to die; but why should he choose my hand to do the deed? WasI not the friend of old days—the friend of his youth? That was hard—harder even than my distrust of him had deserved. He must have known whata load he was laying on me for the rest of my life—ay. a crushing load! And I tell you, it is killing me:” Gabrielle looked into the old man’s pale face, deeply lined and furrowed by grief; which said more plainly than any words what he had suffered, and was still suffering. She felt how profoundly her lost Arno was mourned—how fervently he had been loved, and this broke down all the barriers be- tween them. Trembling with emotion, she stretched out both hands to the old man. “T’ knew that here I should be understood,” he said, taking her hands in his. “Arno loved you; that was enough forme.” His eyes rested on the girl’s fair features, as though he were searching them for some trace of the past. “1 come with a request,” he began, after a short silence—“ with a petition which perhaps no one Eomichooks. co