A Touch of Sun and Other Stories by Mary Hallock Foote
page 71 of 191 (37%)
page 71 of 191 (37%)
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of feeling; they shocked him almost as much as would the spectacle of
Daphne mutilating her beautiful hair, casting dust upon her head, and rending her garments before him. He believed that her trouble of soul was genuine, but his Puritan reserve in matters of conscience, his scholarly taste, his jealousy for the occasion which had brought them to that spot, all combined to make this unrestrained expression of it offensive to him. However, he no longer tried to repress her. "Uncle, you don't believe me," she said; "but you must. I am quite myself." "Except for the prolonged nervous strain you have been suffering; and I am afraid I have not known how to spare you as I might the fatigue, the altitude perhaps, the long journey face to face with these cruel memories. But I will not press it, I will not press it," he concluded hastily, seeing that his words distressed her. "Press it all you can," she said. "I wish you could press it hard enough for me to feel it; but I feel nothing--I am a stone. At this moment," she reiterated, "I have no feeling of any kind but shame for myself that I should be here at all. Oh, if you only knew what I am!" "It is not what you are, it is who you are, that brings you here, Daphne." "Yes, who I am! Who am I? What right had I to come here? I never loved him. I never was engaged to him, but I let you think so. When you wrote me that sweet letter and called me your daughter, why didn't I tell you the truth? Because in that same letter you offered me his money--and--and I wanted the money. I lied to you then, when you were in the first of your grief, to get his money! I have been trying to live up to that He ever since. It has almost killed me; it has killed every bit of truth and decent womanly pride |
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