The woman who can cast such a love from her is not likely to
meet with such another. But with this one I have nothing to do.
It had been well if he had been left with only a wounded heart,
but in that heart lay wounded pride. He hid it carefully, and the
keener in consequence grew the sensitiveness, almost feminine,
which no stranger could have suspected beneath the manner he
wore. Under that bronzed countenance, with its firm-set mouth and
powerful jaw--below that clear blue eye, and that upright easy
carriage, lay a faithful heart haunted by a sense of wrong: he
who is not perfect in forgiveness must be haunted thus; he only
is free whose love for the human is so strong that he can pardon
the individual sin; he alone can pray the prayer, "Forgive us our
trespasses," out of a full heart. Forgiveness is the only cure of
wrong. And hand in hand with Sense-of-injury walks ever the weak
sister-demon Self-pity, so dear, so sweet to many--both of them
the children of Philautos, not of Agape. But there was no hate,
no revenge, in Godfrey, and, I repeat, his weakness he kept
concealed. It must have been in his eyes, but eyes are hard to
read. For the rest, his was a strong poetic nature--a nature
which half unconsciously turned ever toward the best, away from
the mean judgments of common men, and with positive loathing from
the ways of worldly women.
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