Hugh's thoughts went back, like the clouds, towards that tiny spring of
passion in his own life. He felt that he could have forgiven it--and
himself--if he had been swept into the vortex of a headlong mountain
torrent leaping down its own wild water-way, carrying all before it.
Other men he had seen who had been wrested off their feet, swept out of
their own keeping by such a torrent on the steep hill-side of their
youth. But it had not been so with him. He had walked more cautiously
than they. As he walked he had stopped to look at the little thread of
water which came bubbling up out of its white pebbles. It was so
pretty, it was so feeble, it was so clear. Involuntarily he followed it,
watched it grow, amused himself, half contemptuously, with it, helped
its course by turning obstacles from its path. It never rushed. It never
leaped. It was a toy. The day came when it spread itself safe and
shallow on level land, and he embarked upon it. But he was quickly tired
of it. It was beginning to run muddily through a commonplace country,
past squalid polluting towns and villages. The hills were long since
gone. He turned to row to the shore. And, behold, his oars were gone! He
had been trapped to his destruction.
Hugh had never regarded seriously his intrigue with Lady Newhaven.
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