But for that apparently lucky chance of
Mr. Bates' retirement, he would have gone to some splendid new
country, and severing ties of locality, would have shattered
associations of ideas, and been _able to forget_. He had made up his
mind to go to one of the Australian colonies and make a fresh start
there. But that didn't match with God's intentions by any manner of
means.
His thoughts returned to Norah, and here again--here more plainly
than anywhere else--he saw the work of God. It was wonderful and
awe-inspiring how God had selected the instrument that should destroy
him. He felt that he could have resisted the charms of any other girl
in the world except this one. In mysterious ways Norah's fascination
was potent over him, while it might have been quite feeble in its
effects with regard to other men. But for Dale she represented the
solid embodiment of imagined seductiveness, allurement, supreme
feminine charm; that flicker of wild blood in her was to him an
essential attraction, and it linked itself inexplicably with the
amorous reveries of far-off days when, young and free and wild
himself, he loved the woodland glades instead of hating them.
The selected instrument--Yes, she was the one girl on earth who could
have been safely employed to achieve God's double purpose of
overwhelming him with base passion and bringing his lesson home to him
simultaneously.
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