The chasm Author:George Cram Cook 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: I NEVER in her life having felt the lack of it, wealth meant little to Miss Moulton. To have every luxury, to do whatever one pleased without reckoning the co... more »st, seemed simply the normal state of things. She had no conception of the thing she was ready to throw away; and yet before she reached the end of the hall as she left her father's study, she stopped with a pang. "Fedya !" She voiced the name involuntarily. "I can't let you marry me without a penny!" she thought. Walking slowly on, she turned absent-mindedly into the conservatory. From the west, blown clear of cloud by a northwest wind, the low sun was sending red lances and arrows of light through fronds of palm. In front of a dark green wall of ferns a bed of orchids blazed fantastic, over rich—a sense impression of so violent beauty as to draw the attention of the girl even with her life-problem burning in her thoughts! She remembered a certain rustic seat and passed down a tessellated aisle between fragrant walls of verdure and bloom that rose from shining jardinieres and trailed from hanging baskets. From that artificial splendor of sumptuous nooks and graceful bowers she entered a place of massive rocks and mossrun wild and great ferns growing. There was the tinkle and gurgle of a rivulet, a rustic bridge, a pool of Japanese pond-lilies. With a welcome sense of seclusion she dropped upon the rustic seat to think things out. She was wondering whether among her dabblings of art and knowledge there was anything substantial enough to make a living for her. Hearing a curious swish near a high rock of an island in the pond, she looked and to her amazement beheld there, knee-deep among the lilies, a man in shirt-sleeves and hip-boots. He was stooping over and carefully touching with a brush the center of certain blos...« less