yourself
and rising in the world at the same time, but it can't be done.
There's a season for everything, and the best part of education must
be over before you begin to fight for a position. Otherwise the
handicap is too heavy."

His pity for himself became more poignant; yet still there was nothing
weakening in it, at least nothing that tended to alter his
determination. "No," he thought, "take me all round, I couldn't
originally have bin meant to turn out a wrong un. I've never bin mean
or sneaking or envious in my dealings with other people. I've never
spared myself to give a helping hand to those who treated me decently.
And no one will ever guess the kindly sentiments I entertained for
many other men, or the pleasure I derived the few times I could feel:
'This chap is one I respect, and he seems to like me.' I wanted to be
liked, but the gift o' making myself liked was denied me. Yet, except
for being cast down into sin, I should have got over _that_
difficulty. I was on the right road there too. By enlarging my mind
I'd become more sympathetic. Though always a shy man really and truly,
I was learning to smother the false effects of my shyness."

Thinking thus of his mind, and his long-continued efforts to improve
its powers, he felt: "To go and extinguish all this is an awful thing
to have to do."

Still his determination was not altered. The mystery of that great
pageant, the mental life of William Dale, could not be permitted to
unfold itself any further. It must cease with a snap and a jerk, much
as when the electric current becomes too strong for a small
incandescent lamp and the bulb bursts, the filaments fuse, and all
that the lamp was showing disappears in darkness.

Yes, darkness without a glimmer of hope.

The finger of God--one can't get away from it. If it pushes you toward
the light, then rejoice exceedingly and with a loud voice; if it
pushes you into the dark, then swallow your tongue and go silently. It
seemed to Dale that he comprehended the whole scope and purport of his
doom, and that God's tremendous logic made the justice of his doom
unanswerable. He understood that the law which he had himself set up
was to be binding now. He must execute himself, as he had executed
Everard Barradine. It is for this, the hour of hopelessness and
despair, that God has been waiting. Now it is God's good time. God has
slowly taught him his worthlessness and infamy, so that he may die
despairing.