" Heyst said to himself.
He suffered. He was hurt by the sight of his own life, which ought to
have been a masterpiece of aloofness. He remembered always his last
evening with his father. He remembered the thin features, the great mass
of white hair, and the ivory complexion. A five-branched candlestick
stood on a little table by the side of the easy chair. They had been
talking a long time. The noises of the street had died out one by one,
till at last, in the moonlight, the London houses began to look like the
tombs of an unvisited, unhonoured, cemetery of hopes.
He had listened. Then, after a silence, he had asked--for he was really
young then:
"Is there no guidance?"
His father was in an unexpectedly soft mood on that night, when the moon
swam in a cloudless sky over the begrimed shadows of the town.
"You still believe in something, then?" he said in a clear voice,
which had been growing feeble of late. "You believe in flesh and blood,
perhaps? A full and equable contempt would soon do away with that, too.
But since you have not attained to it, I advise you to cultivate
that form of contempt which is called pity. It is perhaps the least
difficult--always remembering that you, too, if you are anything, are as
pitiful as the rest, yet never expecting any pity for yourself."
"What is one to do, then?" sighed the young man, regarding his father,
rigid in the high-backed chair.
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