He
had never sought so vulgar a thing as fame. He was going out of life
like a snuffed candle. George, if George survived, would know nothing
of his death. He was miles beyond the frontier, and if George, after
months of war, should make his way to this fatal cleft, what trace would
he find of him? And all his friends, Wratislaw, Arthur Mordaunt, the
folk of Glenavelin--no word would ever come to them to tell them of his
end.
But Alice--and in one wave there returned to him the story which he had
striven to put out of his heart. She had known him in his weakness, but
she would never think of him in his strength. The whimsical fate
pleased him. The last meeting on that grey autumn afternoon at the
Broken Bridge had heartened him for his travellings. It had been a
compact between them; and now he was redeeming the promise of the tryst.
And she would never know it, would only know that somewhere and somehow
he had ceased to struggle with an inborn weakness. Well-a-day! It was
no world of rounded corners and complete achievements. It was enough if
a hint, a striving, a beginning were found in the scheme of man's
frailty. He had no clear-cut conception of a future-that was the happy
lot of the strong-hearted--but he had a generous intolerance of little
success. He did not ask rewards, but he prayed for the hope of a good
beginning or a gallant failure.
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