And yet I drifted with the tide of things. It was my habit so to
drift, and the habit of a lifetime is not to be set at naught in a
day by a resolve, however firm. A score of times was I reminded
that an evil is but increased by being ignored. A score of times
confession trembled on my lips, and I burned to tell her everything
from its inception - the environment that had erstwhile warped me,
the honesty by which I was now inspired - and so cast myself upon
the mercy of her belief.
She might accept my story, and, attaching credit to it, forgive me
the deception I had practised, and recognize the great truth that
must ring out in the avowal of my love. But, on the other hand,
she might not accept it; she might deem my confession a shrewd part
of my scheme, and the dread of that kept me silent day by day.
Fully did I see how with every hour that sped confession became
more and more difficult. The sooner the thing were done, the
greater the likelihood of my being believed; the later I left it,
the more probable was it that I should be discredited. Alas!
Bardelys, it seemed, had added cowardice to his other short-comings.
As for the coldness of Roxalanne, that was a pretty fable of
Chatellerault's; or else no more than an assumption, an invention
of the imaginative La Fosse. Far, indeed, from it, I found no
arrogance or coldness in her. All unversed in the artifices of her
sex, all unacquainted with the wiles of coquetry, she was the very
incarnation of naturalness and maidenly simplicity.
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