A Struggle for a Ring — page 275: what you’re looking at

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

“MY LOVE I3 MY TORTURE.” 271 own bitterness; but do you really care so much, so very much for me, Ailie?” ‘““Yes,” she replied; and her voice was sweeter than music with its own passion. ‘‘I wish—just now, while the moon shines on us, and the night wind whispers on us —I wish I could tell you how much I love you. I should be content then to die, because you would understand. Let me try.” | She stood a little distance from him; the moonlight fell on her face, making an aureole round her head. He thought to himsef, though he did not love her, that she had the beauty of a Greek goddess and the passion of a living woman. ‘‘Let me only try to tell you,” she said. ‘‘One of the saddest love-stories I know is that of Theseus and Adriadne. I love you as she loved him. I see no one else in all the crowd of faces that fills the world; I see yours, only yours —and I see it every minute. I see it by night and by day; it smiles in my dreams, it shines down on me from the skies, it looks up to me from laughing waters, it lies in the leaves of flowers, in the pages of books, in the light of the sun, in the beams of the moon; there is no spot in the wide world where I do not see it; and let me tell you—I may never have a chance to speak to you again—let me tell you that it wears for me a beauty no other face could ever wear; it is the face of a king—it is noble, and grand, and perfect; I have thought sometimes that if it would but once soften and smile for me, I would be quite con- tent to die.” A. deep, passionate cry stopped the quick current of words. She went on: ‘«T live in my thoughts of you—I work, I talk to othient I seem to be engaged in different occupations, yet in my KS comicboo ne mn