Pagina 360 di 490

He felt that if he brooded on what he had gone through he would

sicken or grow mad. There were sins whose fascination was more in

the memory than in the doing of them, strange triumphs that

gratified the pride more than the passions, and gave to the

intellect a quickened sense of joy, greater than any joy they

brought, or could ever bring, to the senses. But this was not one

of them. It was a thing to be driven out of the mind, to be

drugged with poppies, to be strangled lest it might strangle one

itself.