It had only been when, brought under the charge,
he must, to clear himself, have at once accused the boy, and have
betrayed the woman whose reputation was in his keeping, that, rather by
generous impulse than by studied intention, he had taken up the burden
that he had now carried for so long. Whether or no the money-lenders
had been themselves in reality deceived, he could never tell; but it had
been certain that, having avowed themselves confident of his guilt, they
could never shift the charge on to his brother in the face of his own
acceptance of it. So he had saved the youth without premeditation or
reckoning of the cost. And now that the full cost was known to him, he
had not shrunk back from its payment. Yet that payment was one that
gave him a greater anguish than if he had laid down his life in physical
martyrdom.
To go back to the old luxury, and ease, and careless peace; to go back
to the old, fresh, fair English woodlands, to go back to the power of
command and the delight of free gifts, to go back to men's honor, and
reverence, and high esteem--these would have been sweet enough--sweet as
food after long famine. But far more than these would it have been to
go back and take the hand of his friend once more in the old, unclouded
trust of their youth; to go back, and stand free and blameless among his
peers, and know that all that man could do to win the heart and the
soul of a woman he could at his will do to win hers whose mere glance
of careless pity had sufficed to light his life to passion.
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