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The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
page 7 of 919 (00%)
come; that he was eagerly to seize it on the instant; and that by
so doing he was to turn the whole current of my existence into a
new channel, and to alter me to myself almost past recognition.

Yet so it was. If I had not dived for Professor Pesca when he lay
under water on his shingle bed, I should in all human probability
never have been connected with the story which these pages will
relate--I should never, perhaps, have heard even the name of the
woman who has lived in all my thoughts, who has possessed herself
of all my energies, who has become the one guiding influence that
now directs the purpose of my life.



III


Pesca's face and manner, on the evening when we confronted each
other at my mother's gate, were more than sufficient to inform me
that something extraordinary had happened. It was quite useless,
however, to ask him for an immediate explanation. I could only
conjecture, while he was dragging me in by both hands, that
(knowing my habits) he had come to the cottage to make sure of
meeting me that night, and that he had some news to tell of an
unusually agreeable kind.

We both bounced into the parlour in a highly abrupt and
undignified manner. My mother sat by the open window laughing and
fanning herself. Pesca was one of her especial favourites and his
wildest eccentricities were always pardonable in her eyes. Poor
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