Gambier's advocate Author:Ronald MacDonald Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III MIRIAM LEMESURIER Studious habit, ambitious purpose and severe taste had combined to make Gambier's life hitherto almost ascetic; and this peri... more »od of unrestrained companionship with a woman beautiful, cultivated, ardent and devoted took effect upon his character far deeper than generally results from a temporary union of passion. In the end it was to sadden the man as well as to soften and give breadth to his judgment; but in the beginning it awoke him to a sense of responsibility somewhat uneasy. A woman had given, and he had taken; if, as judgment came, the suspicion arose that what he had to give was hardly payment in kind, this could but add to his protective devotion. On the tenth day of his visit they were resting, miles from home, Gambier lying on the heather, his companion seated on a smooth stone. It was a day of soft clouds and still air; "a dove-coloured day" the woman had just called it. There had been between them one of those long silences which she called comfortable; the man gazing at the woman, the woman looking out over the moor with a half smile of something more than content. He thought her face five years younger since he saw it in London. And the brooding peace of its expression brought fear on him, so that he broke the silence. " Miriam," he said, " it's no good refusing. You'll just have to." She turned to smile at him, but shook her head, repeating denial. " But why — why ? " he asked, irritated by her persistence. " Stephen, dear," she said softly, " it's your respectability that's demanding marriage for me. You think, perhaps, that some wrong has been done me. But you are not desiring me for your wife. And I wouldn't be it, even if you were. I won't be anybody's wife — not even yours. And that ought to show you how I...« less