That was why he clung to
Georgia. Finally he reached the point where he could distinctly remember
getting the other stuff--the stuff which did not make any difference--on
his hands. He could fairly see it on his hands, could remember distinctly
getting it in his eye. And then Georgia had said something about going,
and he had begged her not to go. But she insisted, and he began to feel
then that the exhilaration was wearing off, that he was coming back to
face things; to the doubt, the uncertainty, the suffering. And now that
he had come back to things as they were, he felt inexpressibly tired.
He went over it again and again, trying to gain something now, not from
any form of excitement, but from things as they were. Suddenly his face
brightened. He sat there in deep thought, and then at last he smiled a
little. Whatever happened must have occurred Friday afternoon. But he had
never in all his life felt as happy about his work as he did before he
left the laboratory Friday afternoon. Could a man feel like that, would
it be in the heart of things to let a man feel that way, if he had
already entered upon the road of his destruction? It had been more than a
happiness of the mind; it was a happiness of the soul, and would not a
man's soul send out some note of warning? And then that same evening when
he and Ernestine sat before the fire! If already this grim fate had
entered into their lives, would not their love, would not _her_ love, all
intuition, deep-seeing, feeling that which it could not understand, have
felt in that moment of supreme happiness, some token of what was ahead?
It could not be that the world jeered at men like that.
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