These, having shuffled thither, dropped, huddled and slept.
His way was not theirs: to him the open space was his domain. He ranged
the streets, one saw, as if they had been the South Downs, with the long
stride and sensitive tread of a man who reckons with inequalities of
footing. The country and the town were earth alike, though now of
springing grass and now again of flagstones.
His face, after a night of fierce self-searching, looked its age, that of
a man past forty; his aspect upon affairs was no more a detached
observer's; his eyes were hard, his smile was bleak. Sodden misery,
stupor, and despair lay all about him, and would have drawn his pitying
comments if it had not been so with him that all his concern must be for
himself.
"She wants me, and I must go to her," was the burden of his thought; but,
like a recurring line in a poem, it concluded very diverse matter.
"I played the traitor to her; I could not wait--and yet I must have known.
I said to myself, It is enough to have known and loved her; watch her
happy, and thank God. That should have been enough for any man who had
ever seen the blue beam of her eyes shed in kindliness upon him; but I
grew blind and could not see.
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