"I will not bear it," said Hugh, tears of anguish welling up into his eyes.
He had not only lost her, but he had lost himself. That better, humble, earnest self had gone away with Rachel, and he was thrust back on the old false cowardly self whom, since she had loved him, he had abhorred. He had disowned it. He had cast it off. Now it enveloped him again like a shirt of fire, and a voice within him said, "This is the real you. You deceived yourself for a moment. But this is the real you—the liar, the coward, the traitor, who will live with you again forever."
"I am forsaken," said Hugh. He repeated the words over and over again. "Forsaken! Forsaken!" And he looked round for a way of escape.
Somewhere in the back of his mind a picture hung which he had seen once and never looked at again. He turned and looked at it now, as a man turns and looks at a picture on the wall behind him.
He saw it again, the still upturned face of the little lake among its encircling trees, as he had seen it that day when he and Doll came suddenly upon it in the woods. What had it to do with him? He had escaped from it once. He understood now.
Who, that has once seen it, has ever forgotten it, the look that deep water takes when life is unbearable! "Come down to me among my tall water-plants," it says. "I am a refuge, a way of escape. This horror and nightmare of life cannot reach you in my bosom. Come down to me. I promise nothing but to lay my cool hand upon the fire in your brain, and that the world shall release its clutch upon you, the world which promises, and will not keep its promises. I will keep mine."
Hugh's mind wavered, as the flame of a candle wavers in a sudden draught. So had it wavered once in the fear of death, and he had yielded to that fear. So it wavered now in a greater fear, the fear of life, and he yielded to that fear.
He caught up his hat and went out.
It was dark, and he hit against the people in the feebly lighted streets as he hurried past. How hot it was! How absurd to see those gathered heaps of snow, and the muffled figures of men and women.
Presently he had left the town, and was in the open country. Where was he going along this interminable road in this dim snow light?