"On the way down the Degenfall, perhaps!" rejoined uncle Edmund. "--I
believe it was that blow brought me to my senses, and made me get out!"
"Thank you, Ed!" said uncle Edward.
Once more I write from the manuscript.
"I said to myself he _must_ have got out! It could not be that I had
drowned my own brother! Such a ghastly thing could not have been
permitted! It was too terrible to be possible!
"How, then, had we been living the last few months? What brothers had we
been? Had we been loving one another? Had I been a neighbour to my
nearest? Had I been a brother to my twin? Was not murder the natural
outcome of it all? He that loveth not his brother is a murderer! If so,
where the good of saving me from being in deed what I was in nature? I
had cast off my brother for a treacherous woman! My very thought sickened
within me.
"My soul seemed to grow luminous, and understand everything. I saw my
whole behaviour as it was. The scales fell from my inward eyes, and there
came a sudden, total, and absolute revulsion in my conscious self--like
what takes place, I presume, at the day of judgment, when the God in
every man sits in judgment upon the man. Had the gate of heaven stood
wide open, neither angel with flaming sword, nor Peter with the keys to
dispute my entrance, I would have turned away from it, and sought the
deepest hell.
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