Other editions of book The Penalty

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The number of love affairs which intervened between Barbara Ferris's first one, when she was eleven, and her twenty-second birthday could not have been counted on the fingers of her two hands. Many boys, many men, had seemed wonderfully attractive to her. She did not know why. She knew only that the attraction seemed strong and eternal while it lasted, and that it never lasted long. She was sixteen before she began to consider herself a heartless, flirtatious, unstable, jilting sort of a girl. When she made this discovery, she was terribly ashamed, and for one long depressing year fell in love with nobody, became very shy, and hated herself. It was during this year that she had her first, last, and only touch of mania. It lasted only a little while and was not acute. She got the idea that she was being watched, spied on, and followed. But she was too strong in body and mind to give in for long to so silly an hallucination. And when she had dismissed the second man and her maid, who had particularly excited her suspicions, the mania left her, as a dream leaves at waking.

The number of love affairs which intervened between Barbara Ferris's first one, when she was eleven, and her twenty-second birthday could not have been counted on the fingers of her two hands. Many boys, many men, had seemed wonderfully attractive to her. She did not know why. She knew only that the attraction seemed strong and eternal while it lasted, and that it never lasted long. She was sixteen before she began to consider herself a heartless, flirtatious, unstable, jilting sort of a girl. When she made this discovery, she was terribly ashamed, and for one long depressing year fell in love with nobody, became very shy, and hated herself. It was during this year that she had her first, last, and only touch of mania.

If I should lose from my life that part of it of which you are a part, there would be but a skeleton left. Yet if you had played a larger part in my life I should have been so spoiled that there would be no living with me. And Im spoiled enough, God knows! In the Iliad you wrote for me, and I drawed for us both, twas Hector fixed A chilles. When I sat at your right hand and your sharp, swift knife went into the turkey, twas I that got the tit-bits and the oyster. And all was right with the world then, I can tell you! We have ridden together over old battlefields, and I have worn the epaulettes and the swords in the attic, and listened to tales of the great brother who died of the war, and whose bull-terrier Jerry chased the cannon-balls at Gettysburg. Oh, the cutlass captured from the Confederate ram, and the wooden canteen, and the Confederate money (in a frame)! I was the hunter that used to handle the Colt (with the ships engraved on the cylinder) that shot the bufialo from the rear platform of the train, and was stolen by a genuine thief. Is Jeff Davis sbible that he gave to the brother who with Major R. caused game chickens to fight for the edification of his captivity still in your upper bureau drawer? A re the photographs that General Gilmore had taken of Charleston siege still in the bookcase with the glass doors? Or have they vanished like the childs footprint that I made for you when we were planting the the plant, and I was going away? Time has passed. Grofwinephews are as young and hopeful as nephews used to be. have written innumerable miserable grovelling tales. I dedicate this one to you; despairing at last of writing that masterpiece which should have been worthy of you. But tell me this; Is there still a little comer of your heart that I may call mine? a comer into which no one else is allowed to put yea to put foot? Oh, but I should be glad(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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