At breakfast some letters came which put
everything else out of mind. The first thing he did that evening was
to revisit the garret, but the slipper had gone. Cecilia had been
there and had found it carefully folded up in the drawer. She pulled
it out, snipped and tore it into fifty pieces, carried them
downstairs, threw them on the dining-room fire, sat down before it,
poking them further and further into the flames, and watched them
till every vestige had vanished. Frank did not like to make any
inquiries; Cecilia made none, and thence-forward no trace existed at
Waltham Lodge of Madge Hopgood.
CHAPTER XXVI
Baruch went neither to Barnes's shop nor to the Marshalls for nearly
a month. One Sunday morning he was poring over the Moreh Nevochim,
for it had proved too powerful a temptation for him, and he fell upon
the theorem that without God the Universe could not continue to
exist, for God is its Form. It was one of those sayings which may be
nothing or much to the reader. Whether it be nothing or much depends
upon the quality of his mind.
There was certainly nothing in it particularly adapted to Baruch's
condition at that moment, but an antidote may be none the less
efficacious because it is not direct. It removed him to another
region. It was like the sight and sound of the sea to the man who
has been in trouble in an inland city.
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