considerable effect. But now he stood in
a personal relation to these familiar ideas, which gave them a very much
keener import; they had laid their hand upon him in the darkness, he
felt it upon his shoulder, and he knew by its pressure that it was the
hand of destiny. What made this sensation a shock was the element that
was mixed with it; the fact that it came not simply and singly, but with
an attendant shadow in which it immediately merged and lost itself. It
was forbidden fruit--he knew it the instant he had touched it. He felt
that he had pledged himself not to do just this thing which was gleaming
before him so divinely--not to widen the crevice, not to open the door
that would flood him with light. Friendship and honor were at stake;
they stood at his left hand, as his new-born passion stood already at
his right; they claimed him as well, and their grasp had a pressure
which might become acutely painful. The soul is a still more tender
organism than the body, and it shrinks from the prospect of being
subjected to violence. Violence--spiritual violence--was what our
luxurious hero feared; and it is not too much to say that as he lingered
there by the sea, late into the night, while the gurgitation of the
waves grew deeper to his ear, the prospect came to have an element of
positive terror. The two faces of his situation stood confronting each
other; it was a rigid, brutal opposition, and Bernard held his breath
for a while with the wonder of what would come of it. He sat a long time
upon the beach; the night grew very cold, but he had no sense of it.
Then he went away and passed before the Casino again, and wandered
through the village. The Casino was shrouded in darkness and silence,
and there was nothing in the streets of the little town but the salt
smell of the sea, a vague aroma of fish and the distant sound of the
breakers. Little by little, Bernard lost the feeling of having been
startled, and began to perceive that he could reason about his trouble.
Trouble it was, though this seems an odd name for the consciousness of
a bright enchantment; and the first thing that reason, definitely
consulted, told him about the matter was that he had been in love with
Angela Vivian any time these three years. This sapient faculty supplied
him with further information; only two or three of the items of which,
however, it is necessary to reproduce. He had been a great fool--an
incredible fool--not to have discovered before