'Yes,' I pursued. 'I can look back upon my part in it with a calm,
half-smiling pity for myself as for some other man. But I am he,
indeed; and now the chief sorrows of my life are yours.'
I need not say what true gratification I derived from the sympathy
and kindness with which this acknowledgment was received; nor how
often it had risen to my lips before; nor how difficult I had found
it - how impossible, when I came to those passages which touched me
most, and most nearly concerned me - to sustain the character I had
assumed. It is enough to say that I replaced in the clock-case the
record of so many trials, - sorrowfully, it is true, but with a
softened sorrow which was almost pleasure; and felt that in living
through the past again, and communicating to others the lesson it
had helped to teach me, I had been a happier man.
We lingered so long over the leaves from which I had read, that as
I consigned them to their former resting-place, the hand of my
trusty clock pointed to twelve, and there came towards us upon the
wind the voice of the deep and distant bell of St. Paul's as it
struck the hour of midnight.
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