He remembered now
that, when he was drowning, he had clung to Jopp with frenzied arms and
had endangered the bully's life also. The long torture of owing this
debt to so mean a soul was on him still, was rooted in him; but suddenly,
in the silent searching night, some spirit whispered in his ear that this
was the price which he must pay for his life saved to the world, a
compromise with the Inexorable Thing. On the verge of oblivion and the
end, he had been snatched back by relenting Fate, which requires
something for something given, when laws are overridden and doom
defeated. Yes, the price he was meant to pay was gratitude to one of
shrivelled soul and innate antipathy; and he had not been man enough to
see the trial through to the end! With a little increased strain put
upon his vanity and pride he had run amuck. Like some heathen gladiator
he had ravaged in the ring. He had gone down into the basements of human
life and there made a cockpit for his animal rage, till, in the contest,
brain and intellect had been saturated by the fumes and sweat of fleshly
fury.
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