The very kittens of his
childhood revived forgotten moments of long-repented hardness. For
a year before Prothero was killed there were these heartaches. That
tragedy gave them their crowning justification. All these people
said in this form or that, "You owed a debt to us, you evaded it,
you betrayed us, you owed us life out of yourself, love and
services, and you have gone off from us all with this life that was
ours, to live by yourself in dreams about the rule of the world, and
with empty phantoms of power and destiny. All this was
intellectualization. You sacrificed us to the thin things of the
mind. There is no rule of the world at all, or none that a man like
you may lay hold upon. The rule of the world is a fortuitous result
of incalculably multitudinous forces. But all of us you could have
made happier. You could have spared us distresses. Prothero died
because of you. Presently it will be the turn of your father, your
mother--Amanda perhaps. . . ."
He made no written note of his heartaches, but he made several
memoranda about priggishness that White read and came near to
understanding.
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