The Argosy — page 281: what you’re looking at

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

ae The White VWetch. part of the rest I expect you guess, I have gone through the experi- ence which you recommended to make a man of me; but instead of that it has taken more than half the man away, and left me three parts incapacited, mind and body. I feel sometimes that I would like never to set eyes on a woman again, for they are all false—you and Dunning are angels and don’t count—and I have no ambition, and no talents to satisfy it if I had, and I find myself in a blind alley, without energy and without hope.” ‘“What has she done to you, Godfrey, that girl? I know her name—Mary,” continued Mrs, Penteith. ‘‘It was on your lips in your delirium, sometimes with reproach, more often with loving tenderness.”’ ‘Why she has done nothing,” said he, raising himself and looking up at her with a flush on his face and glittering eyes; ‘‘ absolutely nothing. The fault was all mine: I fell in love with her, and could not help myself. For she fulfilled my ideal, she stirred my imagina- tion, she touched my heart, she fired my senses; I loved her better than my own soul; I would have died for her. All this is profane, is it not, aunt Pp—wicked, contemptible. But the end is unimpeachably moral, JI thought she was in some great danger, I am not quite clear on that point yet; at any rate, I ran my head obstinately against a brick wall and persisted in trying to save her from an individual, from whom, as it turns out, I conclude she did not wish to be saved. After following her up here in the train to protect her, and intending to bring her to you, aunt, and to tell you all at the same time, I found that he had come up also, and I saw them both driving quietly away together in the same cab.” ‘Ts she heartless, Godfrey ?” “Ohno. She has a heart; it is only that, in my opinion, she has not given it to the right person. She was so sorry for me when I was ill and so sweet to me, that I deceived myself into the belief that she cared for me—and I was madly happy. I could have been shot once a week to have had her there by me—” he stopped, his voice quiver- ing. ‘Poor little thing! She used to sit by me and look at me like some beautiful child, her sweet, brown, loving eyes saying a hundred strange and wonderful things as they looked into mine. And her fragile white hands, which she used to leave in mine to please me, thrilled me with their soft touch just like fairy fingers, and when she kissed me, if she only let her lips rest for a moment on my forehead, she cast a spell over me that lifted me into another world.” ‘“‘ Kissed you, Godfrey! Did she do that?” Godfrey was now sitting on the sofa, his head bent down on the cushion, so that his face was hidden. At the question he looked up. “She did once or twice. I was very ill, you see, aunt; and she said she did it as my sister. But it had not a sisterly effect on me.” ‘“No, no,” murmured Mrs. Penteith. ‘What is the real truth of it all?” she went on to think: ‘‘ what about the girl’s own feelings P Godfrey,” she said aloud, ‘“‘you must forget her ; it is best you should.” Gomicbooks cor