A Romance of Two Centuries Author:Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie 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 VII STANDARD OIL METHODS As in the old times, the waking up in the matter-of- fact sunlight, with the memory of a romance begun in the moonlight, cau... more »sed a readjustment in my world-relations. Was it not a dream? Then I was overwhelmed by its inevitable significance for my earlier romance with my wife and children — but all that was of the long-distant past; and I mourned their loss. Again I was consoled by the reflection of how fortunate it was for me, a stray waif in entirely different surroundings, to have found even a single hand of friendship extended. Henceforward I was no more merely a museum curiosity, but a citizen of the new age. Like all other really good things, it had come by the free gift of divine grace, not by any arrogant merit of mine; and I thanked Providence that this tender bond was not with a Potiphar's wife, but with so charming a maiden as Orchid. She, with her slender grace, her regular features, her distinction, became to me a representative of modern times and lent to my admiration a semi-religious note of personal worship. You may therefore imagine how eagerly in the morning I awaited her usual appearance; and how disappointed and even anxious I grew when she came in only very late, with an unmistakable air of agitation, T not without an unaccustomed note of resolve, and with a tinge of the embarrassment that I had imagined had disappeared from the heart of humanity during the century of my sleep. This alarmed me, for I feared that our new relation of friendship would be repudiated. My hesitation must have been betrayed by my features, for she said at once, "No, friend, there is no cause for anxiety about our compact, on my side. Indeed, it is dearer to me than ever," — and I interrupted her, taking her willing hands in mine,...« less