He had often told himself that it was
beneath his manliness to be despondent; that he should let such a
trouble run from him like water from a duck's back, consoling
himself with the reflection that if the girl had such bad taste
she could hardly be worthy of him. He had almost tried to belong
to that school which throws the heart away and rules by the head
alone. He knew that others,--perhaps not those who knew him
best, but who nevertheless were the companions of may of his
hours,--gave him credit for such power. Why should a man
afflict himself by the inward burden of an unsatisfied craving,
and allow his heart to sink into his very feet because a girl
would not smile when he wooed her? 'If she be not fair for me,
what care I how fair she be!' He had repeated the lines to
himself a score of times, and had been ashamed of himself because
he could not make them come true to himself.
They had not come true in the least. There he was, Arthur
Fletcher, whom all the world courted, with his heart in his very
boots! There was a miserable load within him, absolutely
palpable to his outward feeling,--a very physical pain,--which
he could not shake off. As he threw the stones into the water he
told himself that it must be so with him always. Though the
world did pet him, though he was liked at his club, and courted
in the hunting-field, and loved at balls and archery meetings,
and reputed by old men to be a rising star, he told himself that
he was so maimed and mutilated as to be only half a man.
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