I felt that I might just as well
lie down and die.
There was injustice in this, I know I was reasoning, as
it were, in a phantom world. Actualities, outlooks,
retrospections--my view of them had been jarred and
distorted by an unexpected, stunning blow. For that it
did not really matter how things actually were up north.
I had never yet faced such possibilities; they opened up
like an abyss which I had skirted in the dark, unknowingly.
True, my wife was something like a child to me. I was
old enough to be her father, older even in mind than in
actual years. But she, too, by marrying an aging man,
had limited her own development, as it were, by mine.
Nor was she I, after all. My child was. The outlook
without her was night. Such a life was not to be lived.
There was the lash of a scourge in these thoughts, so
that I became nervous, impatient, and unjust--even to
the horses. Peter stumbled, and I came near punishing
him with my whip. But I caught myself just before I
yielded to the impulse. I was doing exactly what I should
not do. If Peter stumbled, it was more my own fault than
his. I should have watched the road more carefully instead
of giving in to the trend of my thoughts.
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