“Yes,” said Kendall, slowly. “But she will remember. She is that sort, too. She will never forget—and this thing will always be there, never to be gotten rid of.... She will look at me, and I will see it in her eyes, that she is wondering and that she is afraid—that I might do such a thing again....”
“The trouble with you is too darn much imagination,” Bert said, disgustedly. “Let’s get to bed. Work goes on to-morrow, whatever happens.”
Work would go on and life would go on; death would continue to claim its own and births would replenish the races of the earth; there would be sorrow and joy, sin and repentance, squalor and luxury, in spite of anything that happened to him.... Kendall seized upon this thought. He was infinitely small, of less than negligible importance in the world’s scheme.... Events would transpire as usual, and the story of mankind would continue adding to itself chapter by chapter. It was inevitable.... Just as it was inevitable that the motif of the story should be love, and that so long as it should continue to be love the good should predominate the evil, and the ending, though it might threaten to be tragic, must be happy for the majority. He saw, for the first time, that a world in which love is the first essential cannot be a lost world nor an unhappy world. He wondered if love, in whatever form it showed itself, was not merely the essence of good masquerading under another style. In that case to love was to be virtuous.... He inclined to believe it. The reflection made him easier of mind.
“I think I can sleep,” he said to Bert, and they turned their faces homeward.
CHAPTER XVII
Kendall Ware woke up to a world which was not all straight lines and angles, which was not an uncompromising and rule-of-thumb world as it had seemed yesterday. To-day it was a world in which curves and even curlicues were permissible. Yesterday he was in sympathy with the Blue Laws and could have understood a God who frowned if a man were to kiss his wife of a Sabbath. To-day he could not comprehend the attitude of yesterday, hardly remembered it, in fact. He was young, and rapid changes of attitude were possible to him as the heart was heavy or light, as events were kind or harsh. It would not have been true to say that he was light of heart this morning, but his heart was in a condition to become light, needing only to find Andree and to receive Andree’s forgiveness to make it so.
As was characteristic, the pendulum of his convictions had swung to the opposite and most remote point of its arc; where yesterday any deviation from orthodox rule and rigid form had been a sin, to-day he was inclined to err on the side of liberality. It seemed, rather, as if nothing could be wholly evil, and this simply because it had been shown to him that Andree was not evil and that his relations with her need not of necessity be degrading. Yesterday he had been possessed by his inheritances from his mother; to-day his father was in control. Just as the one had been exaggerated, so now the other was in extreme.... And therefore he could conceive happiness and stand upon the brink of happiness.... To be able to perceive virtue is to be happy. It is a perception which is its own reward....
Last night he had been afraid he would never find Andree; now he was certain she would be easy to find. It was the matter of forgiveness that caused his uneasiness. He had been brutal, harsh, presenting an unlovely spectacle. It was such a spectacle of a man’s self as might prove fatal to love, for who can love the unlovely? And yet when he thought of Andree’s gentleness, her sweetness, of all the many indications he had seen of a gracious and tender character, he even dared to hope that he had not offended past condoning.
He arose impatiently, eager for the day to commence so that it might end and enable him to take up his search.
“Bert!” he called. “Up yet?”