"
And Barney kept repeating, "I guess you've made a mistake, Miss
Crane"; but she did not heed him.
When they were inside the parlor he shifted her weight gently on to
the sofa, and would have drawn off; but she clung to his arm, and it
seemed to him that he was forced to sit down beside her or be rough
with her. "I thought you was goin' right past, Richard," she said
again.
"I ain't Richard," said Barney; but she did not seem to hear him. She
looked straight in his face with a strange boldness, her body
inclined towards him, her head thrown back. Her thin, faded cheeks
were burning, her blue eyes eager, her lips twitching with pitiful
smiles. The room was dim with candle-light, but everything in it was
distinct, and Sylvia Crane, looking straight at Barney Thayer's face,
saw the face of Richard Alger.
Suddenly Barney himself had a curious impression. The features of
Richard Alger instead of his own seemed to look back at him from his
own thoughts. He dashed his hand across his face with an impatient,
bewildered motion, as if he brushed away unseen cobwebs, and stood
up. "You have made--" he began again; but Sylvia interrupted him with
a weak cry. "Set down here, set down here, jest a minute, if you
don't want to kill me!" she wailed out, and she clutched at his
sleeve and pulled him down, and before he knew what she was doing had
shrunk close to him, and laid her head on his shoulder.
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