Page:Later Life (1919).djvu/278

270 had bounded her vision for years: the little circle of the little prejudices, the little moralities, the little follies; the little circle in which all the others—her own people, people like herself, the small people—felt happy and comfortable with their little philosophies, their little religions, their little dogmas? Had she not, for weeks and months past, been contemplating more distant prospects, all the distant cities of light on the horizons above which sailed the spacious cloud-worlds and across which shot the revealing lightning-flashes? In the love which she had already confessed to herself so honestly that it etherealized into sheer ecstasy, had she not risen above all that was still left in her and about her of prejudice and insincerity, that sneering at herself and others, with all the rest of that feeble cynicism? If she wanted to live, must she not be honest, honest in all things? Oh, she felt—in these thoughts which rushed through her mind in those few seconds while she leant against the table, her forehead bedewed with heat and excitement—that she was shaking off the nightmare of the past and that, if she felt remorse, she must also try to give back what she had taken. . . and what had never belonged to her, because it had never been her right, because it had never been her happiness, any more than his, nor her life, any more than his life! No, she had grown out of that prejudice, the horror of making herself ridiculous; and what she had stolen she