Listening to the hazy and rather disconnected recital, I tried to
piece the story together as it really happened; to discover its logic, its
necessity; the arts by which this decayed citizen, proficient only in the
lore of vice and scorned by the whole populace, had gained his end; above
all, how it came about that these two never wearied of their infatuation.
Had he struck some latent and hideously defective chord in her motherly
breast, that began to throb in response to his amorous complexities--was
_that_ their common bond?
Likely enough.
But I would prefer to think otherwise. I would prefer to think that this
woman's very simplicity, and this green dell, had worked a miracle;
purging and simplifying him, carrying him away from depraved memories of
middle life towards certain half-forgotten and holier ideals of youth that
revived, at last, and took shape in the prime features of this--as he may
have called it--pastoral diversion; making him cling to them stubbornly,
even as we might promise ourselves to cling to some friend of past days,
were he ever to return....
The idyll lasted for long, ere the awful retribution came--the element of
insecurity acting, I suppose, as a cement.
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