And then, he saw it again and again looming suddenly out of the darkness,
brightening into beauty and the semblance of strength, to be as suddenly
destroyed once more. With each frantic beat of his heart the awful
transformation was renewed. For dreams need not time to spin out their
intolerable length. With each burning throb of his raging blood, every
nerve in his body, every aching recess of his brain, was pierced and
twisted, and pierced again with unceasing agony.
Then a new horror was added to the rest. He saw before him the poor Polish
girl, her only beauty shorn away for his sake, he saw all that he had
promised in return, and he knew that he had nothing to give her, nothing,
absolutely, save the crazy love of a wretched madman. He could not even
repay her the miserable money which had cost her so dear. Out of his
dreams of fortune there was not so much as a handful of coin left to give
the girl who had given all she had, who had sold her hair to save his
honour. With frightful vividness the truth came over him. That honour of
his, he had pledged it in the recklessness of his madness. She had saved
it out of love, and he had not even--but no--there was a new memory
there--love he had for her, passionate, tender, true, a love that had not
its place among the terrors of the past. But--was not this a new dream, a
new delusion of his shaken brain? And if he loved her, was it not yet more
terrible to have deceived the loved one, more monstrous, more infamous,
more utterly damnable? The figure of her rose before him, pitiful, thin,
weak, with outstretched hands and trusting eyes--and he had taken of her
all she had.
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