Chapter 18
The day he did not leave the house, and, indeed, spent most of the time in his own room, sick with a wild terror of dying, a indifferent to life itself. The sciousness of being hunted, sracked down, had begun to dominate him. If the tapestry did but tremble in the wind, he shook. The dead leaves that were blown against the leaded panes seemed to him like his own wasted resolutions and wild regrets. When he closed his eyes, he saw again the sailors face peering through the mist-stained glass, and horror seemed once more to lay its hand upon his heart.
But perhaps it had been only his fancy that had called vengea of the night ahe hideous shapes of punishment before him. Actual life was chaos, but there was something terribly logical in the imagination. It was the imagination that set remorse to dog the feet of sin. It was the imagination that made each crime bear its misshapen brood. In the on world of fact the wicked were not punished, nor the good rewarded. Success was given to the strong, failure thrust upon the weak. That was all. Besides, had any stranger been prowling round the house, he would have been seen by the servants or the keepers. Had any foot-marks been found on the flower-beds, the gardeners would have reported it. Yes, it had been merely fancy. Sibyl Vanes brother had not e back to kill him. He had sailed away in his ship to founder in some winter sea. From him, at any rate, he was safe. Why, the man did not know who he was, could not know who he was. The mask of youth had saved him.
A if it had been merely an illusion, how terrible it was to think that sce could raise such fearful phantoms, and give them visible form, and make them move before one! What sort of life would his be if, day and night, shadows of his crime were to peer at him from silent ers, to mock him from secret places, to whisper in his ear as he sat at the feast, to wake him with icy fingers as he lay asleep! As the thought crept through his brain, he grew pale with terror, and the air seemed to him to have bee suddenly colder. Oh! in what a wild hour of madness he had killed his friend! How ghastly the mere memory of the se! He saw it all again. Each hideous detail came ba with added horror. Out of the black cave of time, terrible and swathed in scarlet, rose the image of his sin. When Lord Henry came in at six oclock, he found him g as one whose heart will break.
It was not till the third day that he veo go out. There was something in the clear, pine-sted air of that winter m that seemed t him back his joyousness and his ardour for life. But it was not merely the physical ditions of envirohat had caused the ge. His own nature had revolted against the excess of anguish that had sought to maim and mar the perfe of its calm. With subtle and finely wrought temperaments it is always so. Their strong passions must either bruise or bend. They either slay the man, or themselves die. Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their owude. Besides, he had vinced himself that he had been the victim of a terror-stri imagination, and looked baow on his fears with something of pity and not a little of pt.
After breakfast, he walked with the duchess for an hour in the garden and then drove across the park to join the shooting-party. The crisp frost lay like salt upon the grass. The sky was an ied cup of blue metal. A thin film of ice bordered the flat, reed-grown lak