In his student days he had loved music, but he had little more than
trifled with it; now, strangely enough, his love, even his
understanding, seemed to have grown; and when the violins
thrilled all the vast space into life, he was shaken with a passion
newly born. All the evening he sat riveted. A rush of memories
came upon him-memories of his student life, with its dreams and
ideals of culture and scholarship, which rose from his past again
like phantoms. In the elevation of the moment the trivial pleasures
that had been tempting him became mean and unworthy. With a
pang of bitter regret he saw himself as he might have been, as he
yet might be.
A few days later his father came home, and his distress of mind
was complete. Clayton need stay in the mountains but little
longer, he said; he was fast making up his losses, and he had hoped
after his trip to England to have Clayton at once in New York; but
now he had best wait perhaps another year. Then had come a struggle that racked heart and brain. All he had ever had was before him again. Could it be his duty to shut himself from this life-his natural heritage-to stifle the highest demands of his nature? Was he seriously in love with that mountain girl? Had he indeed ever been sure of himself? If, then, he did not love her beyond all question, would he not wrong himself, wrong her, by marrying her? Ah, but might he not wrong her, wrong himself -even more? He was bound to her by every tie that his sensitive honor recognized among the duties of one human being to another.
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