Meditated Exile

With his departure sunk the spirit which had sustained me. I had
not gone through that scene willingly; I had suffered quite as
many pangs as himself. I had made my own misery, though disguised
under the supposed condition of another, the subject of my own
mockery; and if I succeeded in driving the iron into HIS soul,
the other end of the shaft was all the while working in mine! His
flight was an equal relief to both of us. The stern spirit left me
from that moment. My agony found relief, momentary though it was,
in a sudden gush of tears. My hot, heavy head sank upon my palms,
and I groaned in unreserved homage to the never-slumbering genius
of pain--that genius which alone is universal--which adopts us from
the cradle--which distinguishes our birth by our tears, hallows
the sentiment of grief to us from the beginning, and maintains
the fountains which supply its sorrows to the end. The lamb skips,
the calf leaps, the fawn bounds, the bird chirps, the young colt
frisks; all things but man enjoy life from its very dawn. He alone
is feeble, suffering. His superior pangs and sorrows are the first
proofs of his singular and superior destiny.

Bitter was the gush of tears that rolled from the surcharged fountains
of my heart; bitter, but free-flowing to my relief, at the moment
when my head seemed likely to burst with a volcanic volume within
it, and when a blistering arrow seemed slowly to traverse, to and
fro, the most sore and shrineing passages of my soul. Had not
Edgerton fled, I could not have sustained it much longer. My passions
would have hurled aside my judgment, and mocked that small policy
under which I acted. I felt that they were about to speak, and
rejoiced that he fled. Had he remained, I should most probably have
poured forth all my suspicion, all my hate; dragged by violence
from his lips the confession of his wrong, and from his heart the
last atonement for it.