We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
CLASSIC
“i SEE SORROW,” SHE CROONED EERILY, “THEN — YOUR DEATH AT HIGH NOON”
the low-down embrace of that dog of a man — I — I who have fought them off with my bleeding nails — with my teeth, with my feet, with my body ; I who have stood at bay and defied them — the gluttonous, lustful pack ; I who have held myself for something that I know there is, somewhere, away horn this place, away from these hideous people. I must go to him — to him — to be beaten and kicked and bruised like a whipped cur. God ! God ! take me from this man — from this place ! Lead me into tragedy — into death — into passion and despair, but take me from this man — from this people !”
“I see tragedy,” moaned the hag, leering, furtively, fearsomely, at the invocative, supplicatory figure, “and then — your death at high noon !”
Once to every man — and to John for the next two weeks — came the heaven of his heart. He had fought
( Thirty-five )
with his naked fists for his woman, and when he obtained her he proceeded accordingly. The law of selfpreservation persists under the vilest of degradations, and Madge gave him her sullen, unresponsive mouth for the sake of her own protection. He watched her with the grim, unremitting fidelity of a dog, and for the slightest show of insubordination there was a brutal cut across the vivid face or a warning flash of a ready knife. Days of this brought to the cat-yellow eyes a cringing fear, and into the girl’s hot, rebellious heart an agony of hatred.
In such a mood she met Harold, second son of the Duke of Maldon.
Poaching upon the preserves of the castle-grounds one day, John was imprisoned by two of the game-keepers. Watching from a slight distance, Madge saw a slight, erect figure coming toward the scene of the disturb
ance. Something in her stirred. Thru the sad aftermath of that chance meeting she never forgot her glimpse of the light, boyish form, the leafy, pale-green canopy, and the red-gold in his hair. There was something about him — the something she had wondered about ; something clean and aloof and different ; something that would count. He spoke to the sullen John and to the two keepers, and then came over to the -hesitant gypsy girl. She raised her mutable, wonderful face, and the eyes met and lingered and locked. They had never loved before — either of them. They knew, in that wordless, indefinite way all of us know things sometimes, that they would never love again as they might love one another.
“What do you — want?” he managed at last. And he felt himself a bally ass for standing, without speech, before an unkempt gypsy maid, when he was noted for his insouciance, his debonair