Myrtle had, perhaps, never so seriously inclined her ear to the honeyed
accents of the young pleader. He flattered her with so much tact,
that she thought she heard an unconscious echo through his lips of an
admiration which he only shared with all around him. But in him he made
it seem discriminating, deliberate, not blind, but very real. This it
evidently was which had led him to trust her with his ambitions and his
plans,--they might be delusions, but he could never keep them from her,
and she was the one woman in the world to whom he thought he could
safely give his confidence.
The dread moment was close at had. Myrtle was listening with an
instinctive premonition of what was coming,--ten thousand mothers and
grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, and so on, had passed through it
all in preceding generations, until time readied backwards to the sturdy
savage who asked no questions of any kind, but knocked down the primeval
great-grandmother of all, and carried her off to his hole in the rock,
or into the tree where he had made his nest. Why should not the coming
question announce itself by stirring in the pulses, and thrilling in the
nerves, of the descendant of all these grandmothers?
She was leaning imperceptibly towards him, drawn by the mere blind
elemental force, as the plummet was attracted to the side of
Schehallien.
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