He upbraided himself the more bitterly for the influence of the book because
it was she who had placed both the good and the evil in his hand with
perfect confidence that he would lay hold on the one and remain unsoiled by
the other. She had remained spirit-proof herself against the influences that
tormented him; out of her own purity she had judged him. And yet, on the
other hand, with that terrible candour of mind which he used either for or
against himself as rigidly as for or against another person, he pleaded in
his own behalf that she had made a mistake in overestimating his strength,
in underestimating his temptations. How should she know that for years his
warfare had gone on direfully? How realize that almost daily he had stood as
at the dividing of two roads: the hard, narrow path ascending to the bleak
white peaks of the spirit; the broad, sweet, downward vistas of the flesh?
How foresee, therefore, that the book would only help to rend him in twain
with a mightier passion for each?
He had been back at the school a week now. He had never dared go to see her.
Confront that luminous face with his darkened one? Deal such a soul the
wound of such dishonour? He knew very well that the slightest word or glance
of self-betrayal would bring on the immediate severance of her relationship
with him: her wifehood might be her martyrdom, but it was martyrdom
inviolate. And yet he felt that if he were once with her, he could not be
responsible for the consequences: he could foresee no degree of self-control
that would keep him from telling her that he loved her. He had been afraid
to go.
But ah, how her image drew him day and night, day and night! Slipping
between him and every other being, every other desire. Her voice kept
calling to him to come to her--a voice new, irresistible, that seemed to
issue from the deeps of Summer, from the deeps of Life, from the deeps of
Love, with its almighty justification.
This was his first Saturday. To-day he had not even the school as a post of
duty, to which he might lash himself for safety. He had gone away from town
in an opposite direction from her home, burying himself alone in the forest.
But between him and that summoning voice he could put no distance. It sang
out afresh to him from the inviting silence of the woods as well as from its
innumerable voices. It sang to him reproachfully from the pages of the old
book: "In the lusty month of May lovers call again to their mind old
gentleness and old service and many deeds that were forgotten by
negligence:" he had never even gone to thank her for all her kindness to him
during his illness!