directed:

"Gentlemen of the jury, you will return a verdict of 'Not Guilty'..."

Down below they were cheering uproariously because my life was saved.
But it was I that had to face my saved life. I sat there, my head bowed
into my hands. The old judge was speaking to me in a tone of lofty
compassion:

"You have suffered much, as it seems, but suffering is the lot of us
men. Rejoice now that your character is cleared; that here in this
public place you have received the verdict of your countrymen that
restores you to the liberties of our country and the affection of your
kindred. I rejoice with you who am a very old man, at the end of my
life...."

It was rather tremendous, his deep voice, his weighted words. Suffering
is the lot of us men!... The formidable legal array, the great powers
of a nation, had stood up to teach me that, and they had taught me
that--suffering is the lot of us men!

It takes long enough to realize that someone is dead at a distance. I
had done that. But how long, how long it needs to know that the life of
your heart has come back from the dead. For years afterwards I could not
bear to have her out of my sight.

Of our first meeting in London all I remember is a speechlessness that
was like the awed hesitation of our overtried souls before the greatness
of a change from the verge of despair to the opening of a supreme joy.

The whole world, the whole of life, with her return, had changed all
around me; it enveloped me, it enfolded me so lightly as not to be felt,
so suddenly as not to be believed in, so completely that that whole
meeting was an embrace, so softly that at last it lapsed into a sense of
rest that was like the fall of a beneficent and welcome death.

For suffering is the lot of man, but not inevitable failure or worthless
despair which is without end--suffering, the mark of manhood, which
bears within its pain a hope of felicity like a jewel set in iron....

Her first words were:

"You broke our compact. You went away from me whilst I was sleeping."
Only the deepness of her reproach revealed the depth of her love,
and the suffering she too had endured to reach a union that was to be
without end--and to forgive.

And, looking back, we see Romance--that subtle thing that is
mirage--that is life. It is the goodness of the years we have lived
through, of the old time when we did this or that, when we dwelt here
or there. Looking back, it seems a wonderful enough thing tha