He was in for it now.
He began to regret that he had not delayed, to think it all out more
thoroughly; perhaps it would have been better to have written.
He bought an evening journal, but he could not read it. What he read
between the lines was his own life. What a miserable failure! What a
mess he had made of his own affairs, and how unworthy of such a woman as
Edith he had been! How indifferent he had been to her happiness in the
pursuit of his own pleasure! How would she receive him? He could hardly
doubt that; but she must know, she must have felt cruelly his
estrangement. What if she met him with a royal forgiveness, as if he
were a returned prodigal? He couldn't stand that. If now he were only
going back with his fortune recovered, with brilliant prospects to spread
before her, and could come into the house in his old playful manner, with
the assumed deference of the master, and say: "Well, Edith dear, the
storm is over. It's all right now. I am awfully glad to get home.
Where's the rascal of an heir?"
Instead of that, he was going with nothing, humiliated, a clerk in a
twine-store. And not much of a clerk at that, he reflected, with his
ready humorous recognition of the situation.
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