This longing followed upon my first bitter denunciation of her; and it
followed soon. It is in our natures, as I then experienced, never more to
desire a thing than when we see it lost to us. Bitterly now did I reproach
myself for not having borne her off with me two nights ago when I had fled
Fifanti's house, when she herself had urged that course upon me. I
despised myself, out of my present want, for my repudiation of her--a
hundred times more bitterly than I had despised myself when I imagined that
I had done a vileness by that repudiation.
Never until now, did it seem to me, had I known how deeply I loved her, how
deeply the roots of our passion had burrowed down into my heart, and
fastened there to be eradicated only with life itself. So thought I then;
and thinking so I cried her name aloud, called to her through the scented
pine-woods, thus voicing my longing and my despair.
And swift on the heels of this would come another mood. There would come
the consciousness of the sin of it all, the imperative need to cleanse
myself of this, to efface her memory from my soul which could not hold it
without sinning anew in fierce desire. I strove to do so with all my poor
weak might. I denounced her to myself again for a soulless harlot; blamed
her for all the ill that had befallen me; accounted her the very hand that
had wielded me, a senseless instrument, to slay her importunate husband.
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