The Wizard's Son, Vol. 2 (of 3)Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
General
The Wizard's Son, Vol. 2 (of 3)
Oliphant, Mrs. (Margaret)
Great Britain -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Supernatural -- Fiction
But that soul had no wings which looked out from Walter's haggard
countenance, as he leant on the half-ruined wall. He gazed at the scene
before him like one who had no lot or part in it. Its peace and
brightness brought but into greater relief the restlessness of his own
soul, the gloom and blackness in his heart. He had been struggling all
night in a fierce internal controversy which, to his own consciousness,
was with another intelligence more powerful than his own, and yet might
have been with himself, with the better part that kept up within him a
protest for better things, with such representatives of conscience and
the higher affections as still existed within him. However it was, he
was exhausted with the struggle, his strength was worn out. That lull of
pain which does not mean any cure, or even any beginning of healing, but
is merely a sign that the power of the sufferer to endure has come to
its limit, gave him a kind of rest. But the rest itself was restless and
incapable of composure. He moved about like an uneasy spirit along the
broken line of the old battlements, pausing here and there to plunge his
eyes into the landscape, to take in the morning air with a long
inspiration. And so unlike was the mood of his mind to his usual
character and habits, that as he moved, Walter gave vent to a low
moaning, such as gives a kind of fictitious relief to the old and
suffering--an involuntary utterance which it was terrible to hear coming
with his breathing from a young man's lips, and in the midst of such a
scene. Was he talking to himself? Was he only moaning as a dumb creature
moans? By and by he half flung himself, in his weariness, into one of
the ruinous embrasures, and remained there, leaning his back against one
side of it. And then he said to himself, repeating the words over and
over again--"Neither God's nor Oona's. Neither Oona's nor God's."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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