“Where is comfort? In division
Of the records of the mind?
Can I part her from herself
And love her, as I knew her kind?
“Can I think of her as dead,
And love her for the love she bore?
No; she never loved me truly,
Love is love for evermore!”
He fought fiercely with his sorrow and shame, and went boldly out into the world again; but it would have been easier to face the cannon of an opposing army than the curious faces of his friends and acquaintances, and even of strangers who knew him by sight, and pointed him out to others as a jilted bridegroom, the latest victim of Miss Van Lew.
It was hard, it was cruel, it was living martyrdom, and Viola’s deepest thirst for revenge might have been more than satiated could she have looked into his heart.