Many
there are who know what that means, and this is the reason why the land is
always thronged. But in the throng no one signals another; to walk there is
to be counted among the Unseen and the Alone.
To this great wistful height of Silence he had struggled at last after all
his days of rising and falling, of climbing and slipping back. It was no
especial triumph for his own strength. His better strength had indeed gone
into it, and the older rightful habitudes of mind that always mean so much
to us when we are tried and tempted, and the old beautiful submission of
himself to the established laws of the world. But more than what these had
effected was what she herself had been to him and had done for him. Even his
discovery of her at the window that last night had had the effect of bidding
him stand off; for he saw there the loyalty and sacredness of wifehood that,
however full of suffering, at least asked for itself the privilege and the
dignity of suffering unnoticed.
Thus he had come to realize that life had long been leading him blindfold,
until one recent day, snatching the bandage from his eyes, she had cried:
"Here is the parting of three ways, each way a tragedy: choose your way and
your tragedy!"
If he confessed his love and found that she felt but friendship for him,
there was the first tragedy.
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