Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/302

278 tortured child! There was nothing else in all the wide world to live for, to strive for. He had grown to associate her with every hope, every emotion, every ambition, of his life. How should he live on without her! What should he do with his empty days! Pride might carry him crippled through a few, but, there was a limit to the endurance of a man, and what then—what of his empty days then?

If he had been doing wrong, God could find some way to punish him outside of her love. Besides, if he was doing wrong, he needed her the more. He needed her to round out his life, to add honor and purity and right. God had sent her to do this work of good. Was she going to refuse merely because the world was not the sort of place which she believed it to be? Master of Life! the world would be abominably empty without her. He would go anywhere she wished; do anything, be anything, she wished. It was not the applause of men that he wanted in this life, nor the multitude of things. It was her hand on his own; her voice in his ears; her image in his heart