I retain nothing
of that, save a general quaintness, a general loneliness, a little
deserted, forgotten token of human doings long since done, standing
on its little acre of wilderness amid that solitude which suggests the
departed presence of man, and which is so much more potent in the flavor
of its desolation than the virgin wilderness whose solitude is still
waiting for man to come.

It made no matter whether John had believed in the friend to whom I
intended writing advice, or had seen through and accepted in good part
my manoeuvre; he had considered my words, that was the point; and he had
not slept in his bed, but on it, if sleep had come to him at all; this
I found out while dressing. Several times I read his note over. "Between
alternate injuries he may find it harder to choose." This was not an
answer to me, but an explanation of his own perplexity. At times it
sounded almost like an appeal, as if he were saying, "Do not blame me
for not being convinced;" and if it was such appeal, why, then, taken
with his resolve to do right at any cost, and his night of inward
contention, it was poignant. "I believe that you will help your friend."
Those words sounded better. But--"tell him a Southern gentleman ought to
be shot either way." What was the meaning of this? A chill import rose
from it into my thoughts, but that I dismissed. To die on account
of Hortense! Such a thing was not to be conceived. And yet, given a
high-strung nature, not only trapped by its own standards, but also
wrought upon during many days by increasing exasperation and unhappiness
while helpless in the trap, and with no other outlook but the trap: the
chill import returned to me more than once, and was reasoned away, as,
with no attention to my surroundings, I took a pair of oars, and got
into a boat belonging to the lodge, and rowed myself slowly among the
sluggish windings of Tern Creek.

Whence come those thoughts that we ourselves feel shame at? It shamed
me now, as I pulled my boat along, that I should have thoughts of John
which needed banishing. What tale would this be to remember of a boy's
life, that he gave it to buy freedom from a pledge which need never
have been binding? What pearl was this to cast before the sophisticated
Hortense? Such act would be robbed of its sadness by its absurdity. Yet,
surely, the bitterest tragedies are those of which the central anguish
is lost amid the dust of surrounding paltriness. If such a thing sho