Snow-Blind by Katharine Newlin Burt
page 26 of 108 (24%)
page 26 of 108 (24%)
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"We can't talk in the house," she said, "and I've got to talk. I--Do
you know what Hugh's doing--what he's telling that girl? What he's letting her believe?" Pete shook his head, but at the same time turned his blue eyes away from her toward the glowing west. "Lies," said Bella. She laughed a short, explosive laugh. "He's got his ideal audience at last--a blind one. She thinks he's young and handsome and heroic. Pete, she thinks he's a hero. She thinks he's buried himself out here for the sake of somebody else. Oh, it's a regular romance, and it's been going on for hours--it's still going on. By now he believes it all himself. He's putting in the details. And Sylvie: 'Oh!' she's saying, and 'Ah, Mr. Garth, how you must have suffered! How wonderful you are!' And--look at me Pete--do you want to know what we are--according to him--you and I?" He did not turn his eyes from the west, even when she shook his arm. "I'm a dried-up mummy of a woman--faithful?--yes, I'm faithful--an old servant. And you're a child, an overgrown bean-pole of a boy, fourteen or fifteen years old." The young man stood tall and still--a statue of golden youth in the golden light--the woman clutching at his arm, her face twisted, her eyes afire, all the colorlessness of her body and the suppressed flame of her spirit pitilessly apparent. "Look at me, Pete." |
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