regard to marrying her. He decided that he would tell him that night
before he left. But he felt that it would make no difference to a man
of Anderson's type; that it was only for his own sake, the sake of
his own honor, that it was necessary to tell him at all. Then he fell
to thinking of what was before him, of the new life upon which he
would enter the next Monday, and it was actually to this man of wrong
courses but right instincts, this man born and bred of the best and
as the best, as if he were contemplating the flames of the stake or
the torture of the rack. He felt, in anticipation, his pride, his
self-respect, stung as with fire and broken as upon the wheel. He was
beset with the agonies of spiritual torture, which yet brought a
certain solace in the triumph of endurance. He had at once the agony
and the delight of the fighter, of the wrestler with the angel. What
he had set himself to do for the sake of not only making good to
others what they had lost through him, but what he had lost through
himself, was unutterably terrible to him. But while his face was
agonized, he yet threw back his head with the motion of the
conqueror. And he owned to himself that the conquest was even greater
because it was against such petty odds, because both the fight and
the triumph savored of the ignoble, even of the ridiculous. It would
be much easier to be a hero whom the multitude would applaud and
worship than a hero whom the multitude would welcome with laughter.
When comedy becomes tragedy, when the ignominious becomes victorious,
he who brings it about becomes majestic in spite of fate itself. And
yet withal the man sitting there listening to the soft murmur from
the other room felt that his own life, so far as the happiness which,
after all, makes life worth living for mortal weakness, was over. He
thought of his wife and sister and children, who would be all safely
sheltered, and, he hoped, even happy in time, although separated from
him; and while his soul rejoiced over that, he yet could not help
thinking of himself. Listening to the voices of the lovers in the
parlor, he thought how he and Amy used to make love, and how it was
all over, perhaps forever over. He smiled a little as he remembered
how his Charlotte had asked him to go with her to meet her lover.
Gentle and affectionate to his family as he was, Carroll was
essentially masculine. He could not in the least understand how the
girl felt. He felt a little anx