But
many and many a day afterwards he bitterly regretted his omission of
duty; his weariness of well-doing.
Now, the great thing was to reach home, and solitude. Mary loved
another! Oh! how should he bear it? He had thought her rejection
of him a hard trial, but that was nothing now. He only remembered
it, to be thankful that he had not yielded to the temptation of
trying his fate again, not in actual words, but in a meeting, where
her manner should tell far more than words, that her sweet smiles,
her dainty movements, her pretty household ways, were all to be
reserved to gladden another's eyes and heart. And he must live on;
that seemed the strangest. That a long life (and he knew men did
live long, even with deep, biting sorrow corroding at their hearts)
must be spent without Mary; nay, with the consciousness she was
another's! That hell of thought he would reserve for the quiet of
his own room, the dead stillness of night. He was on the threshold
of home now.
He entered. There were the usual faces, the usual sights. He
loathed them, and then he cursed himself because he loathed them.
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