or men and
for women alike he knew there was the same right and the same wrong.

His soul abhorred itself because of his unfitness to match with this
ideal woman of his people. He could feel her purity, as he stood there by
her. He could feel that her lips still waited for the lover of her life,
that round her waist the virgin zone still lay untied, that she could
still give herself with all the strength of unsullied purity and
unweakened passion. And he, who had thought in his miserable folly that
at least he was as much Man as she was Woman? He could only give her the
fragments of a life, the battered fragments of what once had been well
worth the having.

He knew that now. He saw himself naked and he knew what he was and what
he had been. He had feared comparison with her intellectually and he
towered above her, even now; he knew it. He knew now that to him it had
been given to sway the thoughts of men, to feel the pulse of the great
world beat, to weld discontent into action, to have an idea and to dare
and to give to others faith and hope. That came to him also, without
conceit, without egotism--with a rush of still more bitter infinitely
more unbearable, pain. For this, too, he had wasted, flung away, so it
seemed to him in his agony of degradation: because he had not been true
to his higher self, because he had not done as a true Man would. And so,
he had been blind. He saw it plainly, now, the path he should have trod,
trampling his weaknesses down, bending his whole life in one strong
effort, living only for the work at hand. And to him it came that,
perchance, on him was this great punishment that because of his
unworthiness the Cause must wait longer and struggle more; that because
he had not been strong little children would sob who might have laughed
and men would long for death who might have joyed in living. And he knew,
too, that had he but been what he might have been he would have stood
fearlessly by her side at last and won her to cast in her lot with his.
For there was a way out, indeed, a way out from the house of bondage, and
none had been so near to it in all time as he had all his life, none had
had their feet pointed so towards it, none had failed so strangely to
pick up the track and follow it to the end. Years ago, as he thought,
sleepless, under the stars, he had touched on it, Geisner had brought him
near to it. And still he had not seen it, had not seen as he saw now that
those who seek to