"You ought not to strike me," she cried. "You oughtn't! You don't know
how valuable I am. Perhaps----" with a little, crazy scream--"perhaps I
might have a son."
She fell in a shuddering heap, and as she dropped she struck heavily
against the protruding end of an oak chest and lay upon the floor, her
arms flung out and limp, as if she were a dead thing.
CHAPTER V
ON BOTH SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC
In the course of twelve years the Shuttle had woven steadily and--its
movements lubricated by time and custom--with increasing rapidity.
Threads of commerce it caught up and shot to and fro, with threads of
literature and art, threads of life drawn from one shore to the other
and back again, until they were bound in the fabric of its weaving.
Coldness there had been between both lands, broad divergence of taste
and thought, argument across seas, sometimes resentment, but the web in
Fate's hands broadened and strengthened and held fast. Coldness faintly
warmed despite itself, taste and thought drawn into nearer contact,
reflecting upon their divergences, grew into tolerance and the knowledge
that the diverging, seen more clearly, was not so broad; argument
coming within speaking distance reasoned itself to logical and practical
conclusions.
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