Mamie watched her own log. After its goadings it kept a truer course
than most of its fellows. But she had outstripped it. Standing upon
the edge of the precipice, feeling the cold spray upon her face,
hearing the maddening roar of the monster below, less to be feared
than that other monster from whom she realised that she had escaped,
she waited for the final plunge....
What was passing in her mind at this supreme moment? We may well
believe that she saw clearly the past through the mists which obscured
the future. Always she had been a log at the mercy of a drunken
father. Her mother had died in giving birth to her, but she knew
vaguely that this mother was a Church member. She did not know--and,
knowing, could never have understood--that from her she had inherited
a conscience--or shall we call it an ineradicable instinct?--which
constrained her to turn aside, shuddering, from certain temptations,
to obey, without reasoning, certain ethical laws, solemnly expounded
to her by a Calvinistic grandmother. But Nature had been too much for
her. Even as she had turned instinctively and with horror from the
breaking of a commandment, so also she had selected the mate who
possessed in excess the physical qualities so conspicuously lacking in
her.
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