He was Conniston, and she was Conniston's sister.
A strong man, a man in whom blood ran red, there leaped up in him for a
moment a sudden and unreasoning rage at that thing which he had called
fate. He saw the unfairness of it all, the hopelessness of it, the
cowardly subterfuge and trickery of life itself as it had played
against him, and with tightly set lips and clenched hands he called
mutely on God Almighty to play the game square. Give him a chance! Give
him just one square deal, only one; let him see a way, let him fight a
man's fight with a ray of hope ahead! In these red moments hope
emblazoned itself before his eyes as a monstrous lie. Bitterness rose
in him until he was drunk with it, and blasphemy filled his heart.
Whichever way he turned, however hard he fought, there was no chance of
winning. From the day he killed Kirkstone the cards had been stacked
against him, and they were stacked now and would be stacked until the
end. He had believed in God, he had believed in the inevitable ethics
of the final reckoning of things, and he had believed strongly that an
impersonal Something more powerful than man-made will was behind him in
his struggles. These beliefs were smashed now.
Pages:
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142