Even thus did Cain cease to be his brother's keeper, and
so slew him.
But the vengeance on his unpremeditated treachery, for treachery, although
unpremeditated, it was none the less, came close upon its heels. The moment
that Isy left the room, weeping and pallid, conscious that a miserable
shame but waited the entrance of a reflection even now importunate, he
threw himself on the floor, writhing as in the claws of a hundred demons.
The next day but one he was to preach his first sermon before his class,
in the presence of his professor of divinity! His immediate impulse was to
rush from the house, and home hot-foot to his mother; and it would have
been well for him to have done so indeed, confessed all, and turned his
back on the church and his paltry ambition together! But he had never been
open with his mother, and he feared his father, not knowing the tender
righteousness of that father's heart, or the springs of love which would at
once have burst open to meet the sorrowful tale of his wretched son; and
instead of fleeing at once to his one city of refuge, he fell but to pacing
the room in hopeless bewilderment; and before long he was searching every
corner of his reviving consciousness, not indeed as yet for any
justification, but for what palliation of his "fault" might there be found;
for it was the first necessity of this self-lover to think well, or at
least endurably, of himself.
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