He paused a second, then went on, resentment once more threatening in his voice like distant thunder.
“I cannot do with the meanness, the small duplicities, the little treacheries. Oh, God, duplicity is never small, and to me there is no little treachery. Ellinor, let but the tiniest rift be sprung in the crystal, and its note can never ring pure again. Oh, Ellinor, had you forgotten that?”
He stared at her with a new passion of reproach. But she sat, marble-still, with downcast lids: a cold white thing in the moonlight. And that passion of his that might just then have broken into tenderness, like a wave upon a gentle beach, recoiled upon itself as it met the barrier of her high hard pride.
He rose, thrust his nervous hands through his hair, pulling the heavy locks back from his brow. Then he began to speak very rapidly; sometimes turning towards her, as if his emotion must find an object; sometimes in lower tones, as if communing with himself; sometimes again throwing his words, as it were, into space. And thus he made his indictment against the mysterious powers that had ruled his fate.
CHAPTER VII
SHADOWS OF THE HEART OF YOUTH
Be mine a philosopher’s life in the quiet woodland ways,
Where, if I cannot be gay, let a passionless peace be my lot.
Far off from the clamour of liars, ...
And most of all would I flee from the cruel madness of love,
The poison of honey-flowers, and all the measureless ills!