If he judged himself by his own earlier standard he was damned, and he
had dragged Doris Cleveland down with him. So was Myra smeared with
the pitch of moral obloquy. They were sinners all. Pain should be
their desert; shame and sorrow their portion.
Why? Because driven by the need within them, blinded by the dust of
circumstance and groping for security amid the vast confusion which
had overtaken them, they reached out and grasped such semblence of
happiness as came within reach of their uncertain hands.
The world at large, Hollister was aware, would be decisively
intolerant of them all, if the world should by chance be called to
pass judgment.
But he himself could no more pass harsh judgment upon his former wife
than he could feel within himself a personal conviction of sin. Love,
he perceived, was not a fixed emotion. It was like a fire which glows
bright when plied with fuel and burns itself out when it is no longer
fed. To some it was casual, incidental; to others an imperative law of
being. Myra remained essentially the same woman, whether she loved him
or some other man.
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