It weighed
heavily upon him now.
For there came back to him now strange shadowy glimpses of his own
stormy past! Dashing on, to face unknown dangers, the dauntless
adventurer, with a softened heart, recalled the days when he could
gaze, without a secret shudder, upon the battle-torn colors of the
regiment from which he had been chased by that suddenly discovered
sin, once so sweet!
He "looked along life's columned years, to see its riven fane--just
where it fell." And, sadly alone in life now, his heart gnawed with
a growing remorse, he saw in the mirror of memory, once more, the
bright faced boy who had "filled the cup, to toast his flag and
land." Alan Hawke, in all the bright promise of his youth, the
darling of women, the envy of men!
Under the swiftly gliding current of his tortuous past, he plainly
saw now the fanged reefs which had wrecked him! With a smothered
groan, he recalled all that he had lost, and this bitter introspection
brought up to him, among his deeds of passion, the one needless
cruelty of his reckless life! "Poor Justine! There is such a
thing as woman's love after all!" he sighed, for he knew that the
steadfast woman had poured out the wine of her life all in vain.
"She loves me!" he cried!
Woman, born to be man's sport and plaything, is doomed to be the
unconscious avenger of her sex in every tragedy of the heart! The
treason of some callous lover is repaid with vengeance meted out to
some defenseless man who comes all unguarded "into the arid desert
of Phryne's life, where all is parched and hot.
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