and if it had not been so late he would have gone to her there and
then. He pictured to himself the long evenings he would spend with Sally
in the cosy sitting-room, the blinds undrawn so that they could watch the
sea; he with his books, while she bent over her work, and the shaded lamp
made her sweet face more fair. They would talk over the growing child, and
when she turned her eyes to his there was in them the light of love. And
the fishermen and their wives who were his patients would come to feel a
great affection for them, and they in their turn would enter into the
pleasures and pains of those simple lives. But his thoughts returned to
the son who would be his and hers. Already he felt in himself a passionate
devotion to it. He thought of passing his hands over his little perfect
limbs, he knew he would be beautiful; and he would make over to him all
his dreams of a rich and varied life. And thinking over the long
pilgrimage of his past he accepted it joyfully. He accepted the deformity
which had made life so hard for him; he knew that it had warped his
character, but now he saw also that by reason of it he had acquired that
power of introspection which had given him so much delight. Without it he
would never have had his keen appreciation of beauty, his passion for art
and literature, and his interest in the varied spectacle of life. The
ridicule and the contempt which had so often been heaped upon him had
turned his mind inward and called forth those flowers which he felt would
never lose their fragrance. Then he saw that the normal was the rarest
thing in the world. Everyone had some defect, of body or of mind: he
thought of all the people he had known (the whole world was like a
sick-house, and there was no rhyme or reason in it), he saw a long
procession, deformed in body and warped in mind, some with illness of the
flesh, weak hearts or weak lungs, and some with illness of the spirit,
languor of will, or a craving for liquor. At this moment he could feel a
holy compassion for them all. They were the helpless instruments of blind
chance. He could pardon Griffiths for his treachery and Mildred for the
pain she had caused him. They could not help themselves. The only
reasonable thing was to accept the good of men and be patient with their
faults. The words of the dying God crossed his memory:

Forgive them, for they know not what they do.

CXXII

He had arranged to meet Sally on Saturday in the Nationa