Had Helen allowed Herman to break his early pledge
to Ninitta, and marry his later love, it is probable that all her life
would have been shadowed by a consciousness of guilt. The conscience
bequeathed to her, as Fenton rightly said, by Puritan ancestors, would
ever have reproached her with having come to happiness over the ruins
of another woman's heart and hopes. Having in the supreme hour of
temptation, however, overcome herself and given him up, it was not
perhaps strange that Helen unconsciously fell somewhat into the
attitude of assuming that this sacrifice gave her not only the right to
sit in judgment upon Ninitta, but also that of having done somewhat
more than might justly have been demanded of her. She had often found
herself wondering whether she had been wise; whether her devotion to an
ideal had not been overstrained; and if she ought not to have
considered rather the happiness of the man she loved than devotion to
an abstract principle.
It was also undoubtedly true, although Helen had not herself reflected
upon this phase of the matter, that her half a dozen years' residence
in Europe had softened and broadened her views. In the present age of
the world there is no method possible by which one can resist the whole
tendency of modern thought and prevent himself from moving forward with
it, unless it be active and violent controversy.
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