The Choir Invisible

He upbraided himself the more bitterly for the influence of the book because

it was she who had placed both the good and the evil in his hand with

perfect confidence that he would lay hold on the one and remain unsoiled by

the other. She had remained spirit-proof herself against the influences that

tormented him; out of her own purity she had judged him. And yet, on the

other hand, with that terrible candour of mind which he used either for or

against himself as rigidly as for or against another person, he pleaded in

his own behalf that she had made a mistake in overestimating his strength,

in underestimating his temptations. How should she know that for years his

warfare had gone on direfully? How realize that almost daily he had stood as

at the dividing of two roads: the hard, narrow path ascending to the bleak

white peaks of the spirit; the broad, sweet, downward vistas of the flesh?

How foresee, therefore, that the book would only help to rend him in twain

with a mightier passion for each?

He had been back at the school a week now. He had never dared go to see her.

Confront that luminous face with his darkened one? Deal such a soul the

wound of such dishonour? He knew very well that the slightest word or glance

of self-betrayal would bring on the immediate severance of her relationship

with him: her wifehood might be her martyrdom, but it was martyrdom

inviolate. And yet he felt that if he were once with her, he could not be

responsible for the consequences: he could foresee no degree of self-control

that would keep him from telling her that he loved her. He had been afraid

to go.

But ah, how her image drew him day and night, day and night! Slipping

between him and every other being, every other desire. Her voice kept

calling to him to come to her--a voice new, irresistible, that seemed to

issue from the deeps of Summer, from the deeps of Life, from the deeps of

Love, with its almighty justification.

This was his first Saturday. To-day he had not even the school as a post of

duty, to which he might lash himself for safety. He had gone away from town

in an opposite direction from her home, burying himself alone in the forest.

But between him and that summoning voice he could put no distance. It sang

out afresh to him from the inviting silence of the woods as well as from its

innumerable voices. It sang to him reproachfully from the pages of the old

book: "In the lusty month of May lovers call again to their mind old

gentleness and old service and many deeds that were forgotten by

negligence:" he had never even gone to thank her for all her kindness to him

during his illness!