What love was,
or how it was, he could not tell; he knew only that it was the will and
the joy of the Father and the Son.
Long ere he arrived at this, however, the falsehood and utter meanness of
his behaviour to Isy had become plain to him, bringing with it such an
overpowering self-contempt and self-loathing, that he was tempted even to
self-destruction to escape the knowledge that he was himself the very man
who had been such, and had done such things. "To know my deed, 'twere best
not know myself!" he might have said with Macbeth. But he must live on, for
how otherwise could he make any atonement? And with the thought of
reparation, and possible forgiveness and reconcilement, his old love for
Isy rushed in like a flood, grown infinitely nobler, and was uplifted at
last into a genuine self-abandoning devotion. But until this final change
arrived, his occasional paroxysms of remorse touched almost on madness, and
for some time it seemed doubtful whether his mind must not retain a
permanent tinge of insanity.
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