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 A PUNCTURED TIEE Francis Thayer was sitting at his desk, with the appointment of the new judge before him. His name to the document would mean a declaration of war, and as yet he had not signed it. It was not dread of the conflict which made him hesitate; it was the woman’s face which came between him and the paper. It was the face that the famous artist had put upon his canvas, and, without warning, it came before him so vividly that it seemed as if he were looking into the eyes of Ruth Fordyce. Again and again the face stole between him and the page, until he threw down his pen, jumped up from the desk and ordered his saddle horse. As the Governor of the State which Senator Fordyce
owned
galloped briskly off through the woods in his desire to banish from his mind the face of the girl,? the girl herself, Senator Fordyce’s beloved daughter, was very busy in her
workshop. On the floor of this room was a Bokhara rug. On the delicately tinted walls hung some choice etchings, a head by Greuze, and one or two little bits of sunny French landscape. An inviting armchair, and some book-shelves rilled with handsomely bound volumes, indicated that the fair laborer had her moments of ease, and that the
belles lettres
has not been entirely banished from her affections. At one end of the room, in a bay window, was a desk covered with books and papers, and near at hand were the shelves of soberly bound works on Sociology. Ruth Fordyce, seated at this desk, with her hair pushedback from her forehead, was wrestling valiantly with one of the many problems which confronted her, but in spite of her desire for light and knowledge she could not keep her mind upon her work. As Ruth had never evinced any particular interest in Man, except anthropologically, so…
