“But, indeed, father, you do not understand. Believe me, I am not afraid—it will not be so bad, after all. So do not—pray, pray, father, do not be so distressed.”
And then with a great start Theodore Carden awoke—awoke to see the small, spare figure of that same dear father, clothed in the long, old-fashioned linen night-shirt of another day, standing by his bed-side.
The old man held a candle in his hand, and was gazing down at his only child with an expression of unutterable woe and grief. “I will try—I am trying, my boy, not to be unreasonably distressed,” he said.
Theodore Carden sat up in bed. Since this awful thing had come on him he had never, even for an instant, forgotten self, but now he saw that his sufferings were small compared with those he had brought on the man into whose face he was gazing with red-rimmed, sunken eyes. For a moment the wild thought came to him that he might try to explain, to justify himself, to prove to his father that in this matter he had but done as others do, and that the punishment was intolerably heavier than the crime; but then, looking up and meeting Thomas Carden’s perplexed, questioning eyes, he felt a great rush of shame and horror, not only of himself, but of all those who look at life as he himself had always looked at it; for the first time, he understood the mysterious necessity, as well as the beauty, of abnegation, of renunciation.
“Father,” he said, “listen. I will not go away alone; I was mad to think of such a thing. We will go together, you and I,—Lane has told me that such has been your wish,—and then perhaps some day we will come back together.”
After this, for the first time for many nights, Theodore Carden fell into a dreamless sleep.