The All-Story, March 1914 — page 135: what you’re looking at

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

608 THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE. eher and that he needed her more than “Oh, no! No, you mustn't!” cried he had needed any one in all his con- scious lie. Lost family and friends seeined to fade and become dim, like figures in a worn tapestry, while she stood out sweet, lovable—perfect to his troubled eyes. To conceive her out of his hfe was impossible; only dark- ness and niusery loomed that way. With her he felt he had a comrade in the fight, if not a leader—she had done so much for herself before his very eyes. Without her he felt that even books were a dead and futile com- pensation. At last she spoke. They had stopped and were facing one another. “T don’t know,” she faltered. “I don’t love any of them, and I never could, and when I think of settling down here and becomiurg like Sal or Mis’ Shannon or Mis’ Lane—ugh! Td rather die! But yet, if it would take me away from Randy and Sal and if it would give me a little chance to live my own life—oh, Paul! I’m almost tempted—perhaps I could marry one of them—”’ Her voice trailed off aimlessly with a falling inflection. He looked at her startled, realizing in a flash that it was his own 1ll-consid- ered advice that would send her away from him—that he was outlining and suggesting a life of wretchedness for her whom, he knew now, he loved with a consuming passion. What faith she had in him—with her great, dark eyes, aglow with tlie fires of a nature as yet unawakened; her broad brow, her mouth, full and sweet, and-her rough hands clasped against her full young breast. She entrusted her future to his keeping as fearlessly as she would have entrusted her one precious little jeweled ring--- childlike, believing ‘in his superior knowledge — womanlike, resting upon his infinite masculine strength and de- cision. “Perhaps I could marry some one—" she repeated vaguely, and quiv- ered with an involuntary shudder. Paul, with a sudden violence. His hands clenched until the knuckles cracked, and his indrawn breath hissed sharply. The repressed torrent of di- vine emotion that had stirred within him moved and rose mercurially. I-lis starved nature, awakened to its bitter hunger at just the moment whea it had refused food, called frantically for her. The sight of her there, love ly, warm, pulsating, and the thought of her as*lost to him— He groaned as the fever mounted and the blood pounded in his temples. “ But why?” she asked wondering- ly. “* Didn't you just tell me to marry? Why do you command me not to now, as though you were angry? Tell me what to do! Help me!” With a swift movement of his hands he plucked hers from her breast and held them in a crushing grasp. “Oh, Betty, ’'m not angry!” he cried in a voice of stich wonderful feel-- ing and tenderness that she forgot the anguish of her fingers. ‘‘ Can't you understand, clear little Betty? I can't Jet you go—I can’t let some one else have you when I want you! day I think of you and dream of you I pray that you may be happy and that you may have all the good there is life. Oh, Betty, don’t you see I love you?” As though by some magic trans- formation he seemed to the girl to be: no longer the dumb, wretched Paut Baird that she had known. In the music of his voice, in the simple grace and sincerity with which he bent and kissed her hands she discovered a crea- ture from another world—a_ glorious figure that had stepped from some faded girlish vision. But the unexpected torrent of his passion frightened her; his very trans- formation smote her with a sense of inexplicable fear. She wanted to run, to get away, to hide. But she could not, for as his voice thrilled and at the same time startled her, she felt herself being drawn gradually toward him oaks eo Every.