Oliver's future faced him untouched. No shadow lay across his path
to hinder his happiness or to mar his chances.
The results were unequal. I began to see them so, and feel the
gnawing of that deathless worm whose ravages lay waste the breast,
while hand and brain fulfil their routine of work, as though all
were well and the foundations of life unshaken.
I suffered as only cowards suffer. I held on to honour; I held on
to home; I held on to Oliver, but with misery for my companion and
a self-contempt which nothing could abate. Each time I mounted the
Bench, I felt a tug at my arm as of a visible, restraining
presence. Each time I returned to my home and met the clear eye of
Oliver beaming upon me with its ever growing promise of future
comradeship, I experienced a rebellion against my own happiness
which opened my eyes to my own nature and its inevitable demand. I
must give up Oliver; or yield my honours, make a full confession
and accept whatever consequences it might bring. I am a proud man,
and the latter alternative was beyond me. With each passing day,
the certainty of this became more absolute and more fixed. In
every man's nature there lurk possibilities of action which he
only recognises under stress, also impossibilities which stretch
like an iron barrier between him and the excellence he craves. I
had come up against such an impossibility. I could forego
pleasure, travel, social intercourse, and even the companionship
of the one being in whom all my hopes centred, but I could not, of
my own volition, pass from the judge's bench to the felon's cell.
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