Read "The Rise of Silas Lapham" by William Dean Howells online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Lapham's strenuous face was broken up with the emotions that had forced him to this question: shame, fear of the things that must have been thought of him, mixed with a faint hope that he might be mistaken, which died out at the shocked and pitying look in Corey's eyes.
"Was I drunk? " he repeated. "I ask you, because I was never touched by drink in my life before, and I don't know. " He stood with his huge hands trembling on the back of his chair, and his dry lips apart, as he stared at Corey.