The Price He Paid — page 97: what you’re looking at

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

88 AT THE BALL. dull. These high-vaulted ceilings, these deep re- cesses and massive pillars, keep the whole place in shade, and your study is the very gloomiest room I know. The great heavy curtains shut out every ray of sunlight.” “The sun disturbs me when I am at work,” ex- plained the baron. | | The young lady tossed her head pettishly: “But, dear me, man does not live for work alone.” “There are natures—mine, for instance—to which work is a positive want, an absolute necessity. A butterfly, such as you, cannot understand this. It flies and flutters about in the sunshine, gleaming with a thousand hues—to perish when the first sharp touch brushes the many-colored dust from its wings. Pleasant enough, but very transitory, this gay butterfly existence!” There was something of the old sarcastic ring in his voice as he spoke the last words. Gabrielle as- sumed a highly offended expression of countenance. “Oh, so you think Iam only a sortof gayly- painted, frivolous moth, Uncle Arno?” “T think it would be unjust to require of you that you should meet suffering, or face struggles of any kind,” said Raven, more gravely. “Beings of your order are created for the sunshine, and can exist in no other element. Work and the battle of life must be left tome, and tosuch asme. To be a sunbeam, and to cheer and lighten the darkness of others, is a vocation, too, in its way. You are quite right, it is foolish inexorably to exclude the bright- ness for fear lest it should blind one. Why should not autumn, for once, be gilded by its golden rays” He had stooped down, and was looking deep into the young girl’s eyes, when a side door was _ noisily opened, and Baroness Harder rustled over the threshold. Raven quickly drew himself erect, cast- ing a glance that was anything but friendly at his sister-in-law, who, happily, did not observe it. Sh was at that moment passing the great mirror in the wall, and taking in ita last general review of her appearance. All that the many arts of the toilet can effect had been accomplished, and with their aid Eomichbooks.com