Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (184 page)

A
buried
thought
like
a
buried
body
will
rot;
and
it
will
spread
a pestilence
through
the
moral
being
that
is
its
grave
or
its
gaoler.

It
was
so
with
me.
   
•

From
being
one
frank
and
impetuous
and
careless,
I
became
moody, choleric,
suspicious;
and
so
temperamentally
unstable
that
as
I
could not
depend
on
myself
so
no
one
else
could
depend
on
me
either.

All
things
that
were
commenced
by
me
had
to
be
finished
by
another;
for
in
the
very
gust
and
flooding
of
success
I
would
throw myself
aside
from
it;
or
bear
myself
so
outrageously
that
my
companions
would
prefer
failure
and
my
absence
to
a
success
which
had
me within
a
league
of
the
prize.

Everything,
even
a
memory,
must
be
faced
at
last.
No
man
can
rest until
he
has
conquered
or
surrendered
to
his
enemy;
for,
be
success attained
or
failure,
a
legitimate
boume
is
reached
wherein
the
mind may
acquiesce
and
be
at
one
with
the
result.

So,
one
day,
I
unburied
my
dead;
looking
upon
it
with
a
curiosity and
fear
which
were
the
equal
of
each
other;
and
having
once
looked I
could
not
forbear
to
look
again;
until
I
became
a
patient,
timid devotee
of
my
own
evil.

A
treacherous
story
in
truth;
and
if
repentance
could
have
retrieved my
crime
how
quickly
it
had
been
erased.
But
the
fact
of
repentance comes
home
only
to
the
person
in
fault.
It
has
no
value
for
the
victim;
for
a
man
may
outrun
the
laws
of
man,
but
the
law
of
his
self he
can
neither
distance
nor
dodge.

Half
the
value
of
an
act
is
its
reaction,
for
the
one
pays
and
completes
the
other.
My
act
was
vanity
and
here
came
shame
to
make of
it
a
total;
and
there,
in
the
mixture
of
the
two,
was
I,
fully
expressed and
condemned.
Vanity
had
sentenced
me
to
shame;
and
shame would
take
up
the
tale
again
with
vanity,
and
would
lead
me
to
the further
justice
of
which
I
had
need.
For
that
which
we
do
outwardly we
do
inwardly.
We
condemn
or
reward
ourselves
in
every
action; and
the
punishment
we
receive
is
due
to
us
in
a
sense
deeper
than that
indicated
in
the
word
retribution.

I
thought
of
those
two;
and
I
thought
of
them
shyly
as
one
who no
longer
had
the
right
even
to
remember
them.
For
they
had
counted on
my
nature
as
they
judged
it;
on
my
honour
as
they
knew
it;
and on
my
friendship
as
they
thought
to
have
proved
it.
But
into
these aspects
of
me
they
had
been
sucked
as
into
a
bog.
I
had
given
way under
their
feet
and
they
had
sunk
into
and
died
in
me.