Why had chance
flung him in her way that, with one careless, haughty glance, one smile
of courteous pity, she should have undone in a moment all the work of a
half-score years, and shattered in a day the serenity which it had cost
him such weary self-contest, such hard-fought victory, to attain?
She had come to pain, to weaken, to disturb, to influence him, to shadow
his peace, to wring his pride, to unman his resolve, as women do mostly
with men. Was life not hard enough here already, that she must make it
more bitter yet to bear?
He had been content, with a soldier's contentment, in danger and in
duty; and she must waken the old coiled serpent of restless, stinging
regret which he had thought lulled to rest forever!
"If I had my heritage!" he thought; and the chisel fell from his hands
as he looked down the length of the barrack room with the blue glare of
the African sky through the casement.
Then he smiled at his own folly, in dreaming idly thus of things that
might have been.
"I will see her no more," he said to himself. "If I do not take care, I
shall end by thinking myself a martyr--the last refuge and consolation
of emasculate vanity, of impotent egotism!"
For though his whole existence was a sacrifice, it never occurred to him
that there was anything whatever great in its acceptation, or unjust
in its endurance. He thought too little of his life's value, or of its
deserts, even to consider by any chance that it had been harshly dealt
with, or unmeritedly visited.
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