These were the half-formed, maddened thoughts that went a-racing through
my mind as I paced the porch that night; and I think they were, perhaps,
the most unworthy thoughts that ever tempted me. For I hated Sir George
and wished him a quick flight to immortality unless he changed in his
desire for wedlock with my cousin.
Gnawing my lips in growing rage I saw the messenger for the pleasure
house mount and gallop out of the stockade, and I wished him evil chance
and a fall to dash his senses out ere he rode up with his cursed message
to Sir George's door.
Passion blinded and deafened me to all whispers of decency; conscience
lay stunned within me, and I think I know now what black obsession
drives men's bodies into murder and their souls to punishments eternal.
Quivering from head to heel, now hot, now cold, and strangling with the
fierce desire for her whom I was losing more hopelessly every moment, I
started aimlessly through the starlight, pacing the stockade like a
caged beast, and I thought my swelling heart would choke me if it broke
not to ease my breath.
So this was love! A ghastly thing, God wot, to transform an honest man,
changing and twisting right and wrong until the threads of decency and
duty hung too hopelessly entangled for him to follow or untwine.
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