But you must
follow love. I had a hope, I have a hope--oh, it is more than that,
because we all find our way sooner or later--and now that you know
the truth, as I see you know it, the light will not be long in
coming. God bless you, dearest child; there is pain ahead of you;
but I don't fear that--pain is not the worst thing or the last
thing!"
XIV
BACK TO CAMBRIDGE
"I HAD a hope . . . I have a hope," these words of his aunt's
echoed often through Howard's brain, in the wakeful night which
followed. Nothing was plain to himself except the fact that things
were tangled; the anxious exaltation which came to him from his
talk with his aunt cleared off like the dying away of the flush of
some beaded liquor. "I must see into this--I must understand what
is happening--I must disentangle it," he said again and again to
himself. He was painfully conscious, as he thought and thought, of
his own deep lack both of moral courage and affection. He liked
nothing that was not easy--easy triumph, easy relations. Somehow
the threads of life had knotted themselves up; he had slipped so
lightly into his place here, he had taken up responsibilities as he
might have taken up a flower; he had meant to be what he called
frank and affectionate all round, and now he felt that he was going
to disappoint everyone. Not till the daylight began to outline the
curtain-rifts did he fall asleep; and he woke with that excited
fatigue which comes of sleeplessness.
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