And why the
deuce need Roderick have gone marching back to destruction? Rowland's
meditations, even when they began in rancor, often brought him peace;
but on this occasion they ushered in a quite peculiar quality of unrest.
He felt conscious of a sudden collapse in his moral energy; a current
that had been flowing for two years with liquid strength seemed at last
to pause and evaporate. Rowland looked away at the stagnant vapors on
the mountains; their dreariness seemed a symbol of the dreariness which
his own generosity had bequeathed him. At last he had arrived at the
uttermost limit of the deference a sane man might pay to other people's
folly; nay, rather, he had transgressed it; he had been befooled on a
gigantic scale. He turned to his book and tried to woo back patience,
but it gave him cold comfort and he tossed it angrily away. He pulled
his hat over his eyes, and tried to wonder, dispassionately, whether
atmospheric conditions had not something to do with his ill-humor. He
remained for some time in this attitude, but was finally aroused from
it by a singular sense that, although he had heard nothing, some one had
approached him.
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