Read "The Girl from Nowhere" by Baillie Reynolds online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A blur / Of gilded mist -- 'twas morn's first hour -- / Made vague the world: and in the gleam / Shivered the half-awakened stream. / Through tinted vapors looming large, / Ambiguous shapes obscurely rode. / She gazed where many a laden barge / Like some dim-moving saurian showed. / -- WILLIAM WATSON.
In after days, whenever he was sleeping badly, or felt ill or feverish, Felix was able to recapture the exact feeling of that moment when he stood, with the defenseless girl, in the glare of the gas on the London pavement, and saw the two pursuers close to them, almost within arm's length. He knew that if the girl was recognized the sympathy of the crowd would be on the side of her uncle, and against the disreputable youth with whom she had run away. And he saw, too, that if she tried to run, recognition was almost inevitable.