“I said he would not die.”
“But what did you mean, then?”
“This: That poor Royall Sherwood is doomed to such a fate that even I, whom he has supplanted in Daisie’s heart; even I, whom he has robbed of the dearest treasure on earth, can afford to pity him. He will be a hopeless cripple for life. The shot in his back affected the spinal column, so that from his waist down he is hopelessly paralyzed—a lifelong wreck.”
“My God! And this was my fiendish work!” The man’s face sank on the window sill, his strong frame shook with remorseful sobs that did not shame his young manhood.
Dallas did not know how to offer any comfort in the face of this remorse. The whole affair was, to him, very terrible.
He pitied Royall Sherwood with the greatness of a noble nature, forgiving all his own wrongs because of the other’s affliction.
For it seemed to him that the young man’s affliction was more cruel than death.
To have all the best gifts of life at command—youth, health, wealth, love—and to be struck down like this at one fell blow into worse than nothingness, to be looking into heaven, yet always lying outside the beautiful gates. Ah, what refinement of cruelty, what living torture!
Of her—his lost love, his bonny Daisie—lured from him by a hideous cheat, kept away by her pity and her sense of duty, a pitiful sacrifice to a cruel plot, he scarce dared think. That way lay madness.
So he did not know how to offer comfort to the broken man before him, crushed by remorse for his hideous sin.