Read "The Crystal Cup" by Gertrude Atherton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Eustace had been carried upstairs. The nurse had arrived. Dr. Pelham was extracting the bullet on a hastily devised operating-table. The two girls sat before the fire Topper had made in the library, silent, after Elsie had explained that her brother had driven down to Atlantic City the day before on his monthly week-end visit.
It was evident that Gita intended to make no confidences, and Elsie could only guess what had happened. She herself had almost fainted when she saw Eustace lying there, helpless, unconscious, looking as if every drop of blood in his body had run out. She wondered impotently at the perversity of Fate. For the first time she admitted to herself that she loved him. Loyalty to Gita and to herself had kept that knowledge safely locked in a remote inner cell of her brain. She believed that if he had never met Gita Carteret she could have won him. He had admired her and sought her out whenever they had happened to meet. When he had visited Atlantic City he had called on her. She had given up too easily, but at that time she had been infatuated with Gita and felt a white passion of desire to serve her and help her to happiness: after the girl's long wretched experience. She had cheerfully sacrificed herself, had, indeed, not given her own claims a thought.