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Sabatini, Rafael, 1875-1950

"Captain Blood"


That is how you will reason. Not so, however, reasoned Captain
Blood. Indeed, that night he reasoned not at all. His soul was
given up to conflict between the almost sacred love he had borne her
in all these years and the evil passion which she had now awakened
in him. Extremes touch, and in touching may for a space become
confused, indistinguishable. And the extremes of love and hate were
to-night so confused in the soul of Captain Blood that in their
fusion they made up a monstrous passion.
Thief and pirate!
That was what she deemed him, without qualification, oblivious of
the deep wrongs he had suffered, the desperate case in which he
found himself after his escape from Barbados, and all the rest that
had gone to make him what he was. That he should have conducted
his filibustering with hands as clean as were possible to a man
engaged in such undertakings had also not occurred to her as a
charitable thought with which to mitigate her judgment of a man
she had once esteemed. She had no charity for him, no mercy.


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