If, on the other hand,
what I had been taught by the supernaturalism of my ancestors were
true, to commit suicide might be but to play finally into the hands
of that same unknown pitiless power with whom my love had all along
been striving.
'Suicide might sever my soul from hers for ever.' I said, and then
the tragedy would seem too monstrously unjust to be true, and I said:
'It cannot be--such things cannot be: it is a hideous dream. She is
not dead! She is in Wales with friends at Carnarvon, and I shall
awake and laugh at all this imaginary woe!'
And what were now my feelings towards the memory of my father? Can
a man cherish in his heart at one and the same moment scorn of
another man for believing in the efficacy of a curse, and bitter
anger against him for having left a curse behind him? He can! On my
return to London after my illness I had sent back to Wilderspin the
copy of _The Veiled Queen_ he had lent me. But from the library of
Raxton Hall I brought my father's own copy, elaborately bound in the
tooled black calf my father affected.
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