Beadle's Dime Novels No. 3: Myra, the Child of Adoption — page 31: what you’re looking at

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

re THE STORM. ‘29 * a torrent of white flame. She was writing—always writing, or with impatient hands tearing up that which she had done, dissatisfied that language could not be made more eloquent. She lifted her pale face as the lightning came in, sweep- ing over her loosened hair and her long white robe, and long- ed to dip her pen in the flame, that it might burn the feelings that were heaving her bosom upon the paper, and kindle like feelings in the soul of her husband. Sometimes the lightning found tears upon her cheek, trickling down from her long eyelashes and raining over her paper in torrents that would have quenched the fiery words she so longed to write; some- times it found a smile parting her lips, and a gleam of ineffable affection glowing in her eyes. Changeful as the storm was that beautiful face, where the tumult of her feelings was writ- ten plainly as the tempest could be traced upon the sky. _ At last Zulima became wholly absorbed in that which she was writing. Her pen flew across the paper, her eyes grew luminous with ardent light. She no longer startled at some new outbreak of the storm; when the lightning flashed over her, she only wrote the faster, as if inspired by the fame. A great magnolia-tree near the window, with all its garniture of leaves, its massive branches and broad white blossoms, was uprooted and hurled down upon the house, shaking it furious- ly in every timber. That instant Zulima was placing her name to the letter, which in all this whirl of the elements she had written to her husband. She dropped the pen with a scream, and darted toward the window. The sash was broken and choked up by a great branch of the magnolia, through whose dark leaves and white blossoms, crushed and broken together, the lightning shot like a storm of lurid ar- rows. The broken glass, the rent foliage, white and green, fell around Zulima as she thrust aside the massive bough with both hands, and looked forth. It was completely uptorn, that fine old tree! The fresh earth, matted to‘its roots, rose high in the air, dripping with rain, and its great trunk crushed the a wicker garden-seat into atoms, where she and her husband - had sat together the evening before his departure. Heart-sick and faint, Zulima drew back. The letter to her husband lay upon the table, and near it the taper flared, wing a jet of flame over the delicate writing. ; comicliooolks.eotin a.