I loathed the woman and myself; in my heart the sealed
fountain of old affection had broken out, and flooded it.
"All the time this thinking went on, I was crawling slowly up the endless
river toward the chalet, driven by a hope inconsistent with what I knew
of my brother. What I felt, he, if he were alive, must be feeling also:
how then could I say to myself that I should find him with her? It was
the last dying hope that I had not killed him that thus fooled me. 'She
will be warming him in her bosom!' I said. But at the very touch, the
idea turned and presented its opposite pole. 'Good God!' I cried in my
heart, 'how shall I compass his deliverance? Better he lay at the bottom
of the fall, than lived to be devoured by that serpent of hell! I will go
straight to the den of the monster, and demand my brother!'"
But to see the eyes of uncle Edmund at this point of the story!
"At last I approached the chalet. All was still. A handkerchief lay on
the grass, white in the moonlight. I went up to it, hoping to find it my
brother's. It was the lady's. I flung it from me like a filthy rag.
"What was the passion worth which in a moment could die so utterly!
"I turned to the house. I would tear him from her: he was mine, not hers!
"My wits were nigh gone. I thought the moonlight was dissolving the
chalet, that the two within might escape me.
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