Once, and not long since, he thought that, freed from the sad disgrace
of the shadowy past, he had begun life anew. They told him--and he told
himself--that a man had that right; that a man was no man who stood
stunned and hopeless, confronting the future in fetters of conscience.
And by that token he had accepted the argument as truth--because he
desired to believe it--and he had risen erect and shaken himself free of
the past--as he supposed; as though the past, which becomes part of us,
can be shaken from tired shoulders with the first shudder of revolt!
No; he understood now that the past was part of him--as his limbs and
head and body and mind were part of him. It had to be reckoned
with--what he had done to himself, to the young girl united to him in
bonds indissoluble except in death.
That she had strayed--under man-made laws held guiltless--could not
shatter the tie. That he, blinded by hope, had hoped to remake a life
already made, and had dared to masquerade before his own soul as a man
free to come, to go, and free to love, could not alter what had been
done.
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