to resist the devil and face the wrath of men, my dereliction in this regard acquires an importance not to be measured by the ordinary standard of law or social usage. For, when I failed to support my principles under trial, Christian faith was betrayed and the avowed power of God put to mockery and shame. I go, therefore, to the death I then shunned, deliberately, conscientiously, determinedly. For the sake of God, for the sake of honor, for the sake of those higher principles which it should be the glory of men to sustain at all risk and in every furnace of affliction, I lay down youth, love, and life, confident that if in so doing I rob one sweet soul of its happiness, I sow anew in other hearts the seed of that stern belief in God and the requirements Bayern Monachium Jerseys of our faith Colombia Kid Jerseys which my cowardly act must have gone so far to destroy.
May God accept the sacrifice in the spirit in which I perform it, and in His gracious mercy make light, not the horrors of the pit into which I am about to descend, but the heart of him who must endure them. Whether long or short, they will be such as He sends me, and the end must be peace.
Chapter 28
Two or One.
How all the other passions fleet to air,
As doubtful thoughts and rash embrac’d despair,
And shuddering fear, and green-ey’d jealousy.
O love, be moderate; allay thy ecstasy.
MER. OF VENICE.
I had finished it; the last line had been read, and I sat in a maze of astonishment and awe. What my thoughts were, what my judgment upon this astounding act of self-destruction for conscience sake, it will not interest you to know. In a matter so complicated with questions of right and wrong, each man must feel for himself, and out of his own Kanadanhanhi Shelburne Parka Suomi nature adjudge praise, or express censure; I, Constance Sterling, shall do neither; I can only wonder and be still.
One point, however, in this lengthy confession I will allude to, as it involves a fact. Mr. Barrows says that he goes to his death, the same death from which he fled when he yielded to the threats of Guy Pollard and gave up the will. He expected, therefore, to find the vat dry, and looked forward to hours, if not days, of long-drawn suffering in a spot devoid of warmth, light, water, and food. His injunction to Ada in that last letter of his — not to make any move to find him for ten days — favors this idea, and proves what his expectations were.
But, by the mercy of God, the vat had been half filled with water in the interim which had elapsed between his first and last visit to the mill, and the prison thus becoming Blackwater Quilted Gilet Suomi a cistern, he must have come to his end Herr Moncler Väst Sverige in a few moments after his fatal plunge. It was the one relief which Kanadanhanhi Summit Takit Suomi a contemplation of this tragedy brought to my overwrought mind.
But with the next day came a reaction; and with a heart full of rejoicing, I prepared to communicate to Dwight Pollard the fact of his release from the dominion of Rhoda Colwell. For whether this record of the past showed him to be a man worthy of full honor or not, it certainly sufficed Bosnia Herzegovina Jerseys to exonerate him from all suspicion of |
