But before he is aware, the time slips by, the clay gets set and there,
in front of his eyes, is the figure as his fancy made it--brittle,
easily broken into dust, but impossible of being moulded afresh until
it shall again go back into the water of oblivion and become the
shapeless mass that once it was.
So, in the three years that had passed since she had yielded body
and soul into the keeping of Jack Traill, had Sally's character
become set in the moulding of his influence. Happiness she had--that
to the full. He cared for her the more when once he had her gentle
nature under his touch; showed her all those little attentions of
which such a mind as his is capable of conceiving--teased her, petted
her, laughed like a schoolboy at her feminine whims and fancies.
For the first month of their relationship, they went abroad. He gave
her money, more money than she had ever had in absolute possession
before, wherewith to fit herself for the journey. She tried to refuse
half of it--told him the sum was preposterous, that less than half
of what he was giving would provide her with the most expensive of
frocks for the rest of her life.
"Sixty pounds?" he said.
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