For Dick was sorely torn. On the one hand he had never ceased to
hang on Quisante's words and to count on Quisante's deeds; on the other,
he had never acquitted himself of responsibility for a marriage which he
believed to have been most disastrous. Worst of all then for him was what
threatened now, an end of the illuminating words and the stirring deeds,
but no end to the marriage yet in sight. To him too death seemed the best
thing, unless that wonderful unlikely resurrection of activity and power
could come. And even then--Dick remembered the face of Quisante's wife as
she lied for him to her friends at Ashwood. The resurrection must be not
only with a renewed but with a transformed mind, if it were to bring
happiness, and to bring no more of things like that.
The world at large, conceiving that the last word had been said and the
last scene in which it was interested played, had soon turned its curious
eyes away from Quisante's sick bed, leaving only the gaze of the smaller
circle personally concerned in the dull and long-drawn-out ending of a
piece once so full of dramatic incident.
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