That meant the smashing up of everything around him. He must leave Japan, leave Campanula, for, deep in his heart, something told him that Campanula could have no place in that new life. It meant the social ruin of Jane du Telle.
Here, alone, away from the object of his passion, all this was very clear.
Then that same old Scotch ancestor, with the long upper lip, and the crude common sense, and the rigid belief in God and the law, came out of his cell and spoke to this effect. There is no excuse before God or man for adultery. Love, the child of God, has no part therein, but Lust, the child of the devil, and the end of Lust is Hell.
All this, with the thoughts that went before it, was edifying and made for good, and the devil said nothing, for the devil, like the great Boyg, has a method with some natures. He does not strike, but lets the victim do the striking, hedging him gently, gently, letting him hit out widely till he is exhausted, or beats himself to death as the Blind One beat himself against the trees.
Early in the morning Leslie rose, white and haggard, and dressed, and went off to the station without waiting for breakfast.
“Tell Campanula San I am going to Arita on business, but will be back to-night. Tell her I am going alone,” he said to Pine-breeze.
“Kashko marimashta,” murmured Pine-breeze, in a voice of devotion, and he departed.
He was going to Arita to get beyond the reach of Jane, and lo! when he got into the railway carriage, she was there—not in the flesh, but in the spirit. And when he alighted at Arita, she was on the platform, and in the street she walked at his side.
The tones of her voice thrilled him, and he smelt the perfume of her hair, he felt the curve of her waist, and his lips felt the satin of her throat, but the physical desire was small compared with the terrible sentiment that was born of it, the heart-breaking longing inspired by her idealized image.
Passion, when it rises to this dimension in the mind of a man, has beautiful attributes as well as vile, it holds in its hands pictures of perfect innocence, besides the others.