"You must not
say it. Don't tell me that all this misery has been for nothing, and
that we have sacrificed our lives to an error. And, besides," she went
on, as he regarded her without speaking, "however it was then, surely
now Ninitta has claims on you which cannot be gainsaid."
"Yes," he said bitterly, "and of whose making?"
She looked at him, pale as death, and with all the anguish of years of
passionate sorrow in her eyes. He faltered before the reproach of her
glance, but he would not yield. The disappointment of his married life,
his sorrow in the years of separation, the selfish masculine instinct
which makes all suffering seem injustice, asserted themselves now. The
effect of the fact that he was forbidden to love this woman was to make
him half consciously feel as if he had now the right to consider only
himself. He almost seemed absolved from any claims for pity which she
might once have had upon him. Even the noblest of men, except the two
or three in the history of the race who have shown themselves to be
possessed of a certain divine effeminacy, instinctively feel that a
disappointment in passion is an absolution from moral obligation.
"See," he said, with a force that was almost brutal; "we loved each
other and we have made that love simply a means of torture. My God!
Helen, the besotted idiots that fling themselves under the wheels of
Juggernaut are no more mad than we were.
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