Leaden depression weighed down his heart, and the flavour of failure was
as aloes in his mouth. Thrice within an hour he had fallen short of his
promises, to Cecelia Brooke, to himself, to his _idee fixe_. His three
chances, to redeem his word to the girl, to measure up to his queer
criterion of honour, to rid his world of Ekstrom, all had slipped through
fingers seemingly too infirm to profit by them.
He felt of a sudden old; old, and tired, and lonely.
The uses of his world, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable! What was
his life? An emptiness. Himself? A shuttlecock, the helpless sport of
his own failings, a vain thing alternately strutting and stumbling, now
swaggering in the guise of an avenger self-appointed, now sneaking in the
shameful habiliments of a felon self-condemned.
What had prevented his dealing out to Ekstrom the punishment he had so well
earned? That insatiable lust for loot of his. But for that damning evidence
against him of the stolen necklace in his pocket he might have had his will
of Ekstrom, and justified himself when discovered by proving that he had
merely done justice to a thief who sold what he had stolen and stole back
to steal again what he had sold.
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