Had I mind enough to divine his
torture, his temptation, his narrow escape? I seemed to feel them, at
any rate, and while I saw him with a beautiful light on his face, I saw
him also ghastly, ashen, with hands that shook as they groped around
her, loosing her, only to draw her convulsively back again. It was the
saddest sight I had ever seen. Death was nothing to it. Here was the
death of happiness. He must wreck the life of the woman who loved him
and whom he loved. I was becoming half frantic, almost ready to cry out
the uselessness of this scene, almost on the point of pulling them
apart, when Sally dragged me away. Her clinging hold then made me feel
perhaps a little of what Miss Sampson's must have been to Steele.
How different the feeling when it was mine! I could have thrust them
apart, after all my schemes and tricks, to throw them together, in
vague, undefined fear of their embrace. Still, when love beat at my own
pulses, when Sally's soft hand held me tight and she leaned to me--that
was different. I was glad to be led away--glad to have a chance to pull
myself together. But was I to have that chance? Sally, who in the stife
of emotion had been forgotten, might have to be reckoned with.
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