And he was forced to confess, in his own heart, that he
loved her yet, in spite of the fact that their positions were reversed;
that he was an honored gentleman, respected and trusted by all, while
she, in the eyes of the world, was a fallen woman with no friend but
himself.
But what of the future? Dick's dreams had always been that he would
win such a position in the world as would enable him, with confidence,
to ask her to share his life. But always there had been the feeling
that he never could be worthy. And with the dark picture of his own
past before him, he knew he had no right to think of her as his wife.
But now there was no question as to his position. But what of hers?
Could he think of taking for a wife, one whom he had seen in that house
at Cleveland? On the one hand, his love plead for her; on the other,
the horror of her life argued against it. Again his sense of justice
plead, and his own life came before him like a horrid vision as it had
done that morning when he learned of his father's death. He saw his
childhood home, smelt the odor of the fragrant pines upon the hills,
and heard the murmur of the river running past the cabin. Again he
heard his drunken father cursing in his sleep, and caught the whisper
of his mother's dying prayer; and again he crept stealthily out of the
cabin into the glory of the morning, with a lean hound his only
companion.
Slowly and painfully he traced his way along the road of memory,
recalling every place where he had advanced; every place where he had
fallen; going step by step from the innocence of boyhood to the awful
knowledge of the man of the world.
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