To Dale the idea of an offense so gross that its perpetrator deserved
neither pity nor mercy was if anything stronger now than when it had
first entered and filled his mind.
Yet it seemed to him that now, after all the years that had gone by,
he could for the first time perfectly understand the dark and shameful
tangle of emotions through which the sinner moved onward to his sin.
It seemed that with luminous clearness he could look right into the
corrupt heart of the dead man. He could understand all, though he
could forgive nothing. He could measure the force of every thought and
sensation that had pushed the dead man on and on.
After middle-age the blood grows stagnant, habit dulls the edge of
appetite, a weariness of the mind and of the body makes one cease to
taste well-used delights; a strong new stimulus is required to revive
the emotional life that is sinking to decay. Such a stimulus must not
only be strong and new, it must be light, delicate, altogether
strange. The effect it produces is due to charm and spell as much as
to substance and form.
To people who are elderly, youth itself, merely because it is youth,
exercises a tremendous fascination. It sheds an atmosphere that is
pleasant to breathe.
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