He drew back from the thought as one draws away from the rude touch upon
a wound. Lay bare the scars of his life that another profit by their
ugliness? Years of habit were against it; everything fundamentally
himself was against it. But he was a man who had never yet shrunk from
the thing he saw was right to do. The cost of an accomplishment never
deterred him from a thing he saw must be accomplished. With each second
of listening to her sobs, he was becoming once more the man who masters,
the man ruthless and unsparing in his purposefulness.
"Ernestine," he began, and his voice was very strange, for it knew it was
to carry things it had never carried before, "you and I are similarly
placed in that we have both lost the great thing of life. But there is
something remains to each of us. Life has left something to us both. To
you it has left a rose jar. To me--a heap of ashes."
It came with the moment's need. It comprehended it so well the channels
long closed seemed of themselves to open.
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