It might be different if I did not know how happy I can make him.
_July 3d._--Let me write it down, all my infamy. I am possessed by a
new fear,--that Gabriel might prove honest. It is not true that
trouble chasteneth; there is no health left in me. If I clear all
the cobwebs away, I still can see the right. I can see this: that he
loves her better than me, and I remember our covenant.
I know that it is my duty to go to him and lay his freedom in his
hands; or, barring this, to await the truth from his own lips. Yet
now, when I am alone with him, I am possessed by this terrible new
fear, that he might be true to his own self and me. For to marry one
woman and love another is a shameful act indeed.
Let me look upon my love and ask myself whereof it is made. If I
seek to have this man, knowing his heart to be another's, if I
desire for him rather the silence of cowardice than the nobler
loyalty of truth, why, then, my love is not good love. It is not
love, but a most unholy passion, that places its desire above the
well-being of its object. And yet I can see the right.
Oh! how empty are these dreams, and how the devil in us, the man of
flesh, mocks the God-led spirit that dreamed them!
The blood of the heart is master.
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