Can a man never get away from the consequences of his wickedness, even though he repents? . . . Restitution is necessary as well as repentance; but when one cannot make restitution, when it is impossible—what then? I suppose one has to reply, Well, you have to suffer, that is all. . . . Poor Alo! To think that after all these years, you can strike me!
There is something malicious in the way Mercy Falchion crosses my path. What she knows, she knows; and what she can do if she chooses, I must endure. I cannot love Mercy Falchion again, and that, I suppose, is the last thing she would wish now. I cannot bring Alo back. But how does that concern her! Why does she hate me so? For, underneath her kindest words,—and they are kind sometimes,—I can detect the note of enmity, of calculating scorn. . . . I wish I could go to Ruth and tell her all, and ask her to decide if she can take a man with such a past. . . . What a thing it is to have had a clean record of unflinching manliness at one's back!
I add another extract:
Phil's story of Danger Mountain struck like ice at my heart. There was a horrible irony in the thing: that it should be told to me, of all the world, and at such a time. Some would say, I suppose, that it was the arrangement of Providence. Not to speak it profanely, it seems to be the achievement of the devil. The torture was too malicious for God. . . .
Phil's letter has gone to his pal at Danger Mountain. . . .
The fourth day after the funeral Justine Caron came to see Galt Roscoe. This was the substance of their conversation, as I came to know long afterwards.
"Monsieur," she said, "I have come to pay something of a debt which I owe to you. It is a long time since you gave my poor Hector burial, but I have never forgotten, and I have brought you at last—you must not shake your head so—the money you spent. . . . But you MUST take it. I should be miserable if you did not. The money is all that I can repay; the kindness is for memory and gratitude always."
He looked at her wonderingly, earnestly, she seemed so unworldly, standing there, her life's ambition not stirring beyond duty to her dead. If goodness makes beauty, she was beautiful; and yet, besides all that, she had a warm, absorbing eye, a soft, rounded cheek, and she carried in her face the light of a cheerful, engaging spirit.
"Will it make you happier if I take the money?" he said at last, and his voice showed how she had moved him.
"So much happier!" she answered, and she put a roll of notes into his hand.