“Shall I stop with you a bit longer?”
I saw he wished it and sat myself down upon the foot of the bed.
“Good lad,” he said. “I don’t deserve all this, Renalt. It should be a blank and empty thing to review a life spent in idleness and self-indulgence. I ought to feel that, and yet I’m at peace. Why wasn’t I of your militant philosophers, who treating love like any other luxury, find salve for the bitter sting of it in a brave independence of righteousness!”
“As well ask, dad, why in battle the bullets spare some and mangle others.”
“You mean the faculty of overriding fate is constitutional, not a courageous theory, Renalt?”
“Yet I think your philosopher would be the first to acknowledge its truth.”
“Of course. He’d have a principle to prove. But I can’t gather consolation there for having wittingly sunk myself to the beasts.”
“Dad!”
“Why should I mince matters? Let me look at you full face. I have never been a liar, but I’ve chosen to deceive myself into the belief that mere brute self-indulgence was a fine revolt against the tyranny of the gods.”
“It may have been nature’s counter-irritant to unbearable suffering.”