Since recounting the conversation
about the donkey in Ault, he had never again mentioned Pilar to his
friend, nor betrayed by a single word the circumstances in which he
had lived since the middle of August. Such disclosures would have
necessitated a moral effort on his part, for which even his
friendship for Schrotter could not supply him with sufficient force.
He knew that Schrotter's views on morality were neither narrow nor
pharisaical, that to him virtue did not consist in the outward
observance of social rules, but in self-forgetful, brotherly love
and a strict adherence to duty. It would have afforded him
unspeakable relief to have been able to pour out his heart to his
friend, to give him an insight into his turbid love-story and the
conflict in his soul. But a sense of shame--the outcome, no doubt,
of his own disgust at the unsavory accessories of his love--had
withheld him from making these confidences. He made none now,
complained only in a general way of the emptiness of his life, to
which neither desire nor hope bound him any more; especially that he
had no future, and looked forward to each new day with horror and
shrinking.
Schrotter's answer was, as usual, full of faithful affection and
wise encouragement.
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