John, with a smile of sorrowful bitterness, here
interrupted the deeply troubled woman--"whether, in order to soften your
heart, I am not painting in blacker colours than reality requires. Oh,
how little you know me yet! I would rather this tongue should wither
than that I should unchivalrously permit it to deviate one straw's
breadth from the truth in order to attain a selfish purpose. No, mother!
My description of the grief which often overpowers this soul was far too
lukewarm. If your first sacrifice was intended to make me a happy man,
its effect was no stronger than the light of the candle which is burned
amid the radiance of the noonday sun. Perhaps I should have been happier
had I been allowed to grow up in modest circumstances under your tender
care; for then my course would have been long and steep, and I should
have been forced to climb many steps to reach the point where barriers
are fixed to ambition. But as it is, I began at the place which many of
the best men regard as the highest goal. The great man whom you loved
understood life better than you. Had I obeyed his wish, and in the
stillness of the cloister striven for blessings which do not belong to
this world, this miserable existence would have seemed less unendurable
to me, then doubtless a much wider space would have separated me from
despair; for I am so unhappy, mother, that I envy the poor peasant who
in the sweat of his brow gathers the harvest which his sterile fields
produce; for years I have been as wretched as the captive lion in
its cage, the lover whose bride is torn from him on the marriage day.
Imagine the wish as a woman, and beside her a magician who, by virtue of
the power which he possesses, cries, 'The fulfilment of every desire you
strive to attain shall be forever withheld,' and you will have an idea
of the devastated existence of the pitiable man who, if it were not
sinful, would curse those who gave him the life in which he has long
seen nothing save the horrible, jeering spectre of disappointment."

"Stop!" moaned Barbara sorrowfully, pressing her hand upon her brow as
if frantic. "So even my hardest sacrifice was futile, and what rendered
life valuable to my foolish heart was mere delusion and bewildering
deception. What I beheld raising you to the stars, as though with
eagles' wings, was a clogging weight; what seemed to me at a distance
the bright sunshine irradiating your path, was a Will-o'-the-wisp luring
to destruction. W