“It almost amounts to that. Perhaps, after long experience and much suffering, the individuality may become secure, and the armour no longer necessary, but this is a bitter process. Most people become extinct, and then congratulate themselves on self-conquest.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Hadria musingly. “How dangerous it is to congratulate oneself on anything! One never is so near to folly as then.”
The Professor threw some crumbs to a chaffinch, which had flown down within a few yards of the tea-table.
“I think you are disposed, at present, to criticise yourself too mercilessly,” he said in a tone that had drawn forth many a confidence. It was not to be resisted.
“No; that would be difficult.”
“Your conscience may accuse you severely, but who of us escapes such accusations? Be a little charitable with yourself, as you would with others. Life, you know, is not such an easy game to play. Beginners must make wrong moves now and then.”
There was a long pause.
“It sounds so mild when you put it like that. But I am not a beginner. I am quite a veteran, yet I am not seasoned. My impulses are more imperious, more blinding than I had the least idea of.” (The words hastened on.) “Life comes and pulls one by the sleeve; stirs, prompts, bewilders, tempts in a thousand ways; emotion rises in whirlwinds—and one is confused, and reels and gropes and stumbles, and then some cruel, clear day one awakes to find the print of intoxicated footsteps in the precincts of the sanctuary, and recognises oneself as desecrator.”
The Professor leant forward in his low chair. The chaffinch gave a light chirp, as if to recall him to his duty. Hadria performed it for him. The chaffinch flew off with the booty.
“There is no suffering so horrible as that which involves remorse or self-contempt,” he said, and his voice trembled. “To have to settle down to look upon some part of one’s action, of one’s moral self, with shame or scorn, is almost intolerable.”