"I used to think I knew life, but I come
to the belief in the end that I know nothing. Who could have guessed that
he would have spoken like that!"
"He forgave her, monsieur."
The Judge nodded mournfully. "Yes, yes, but I used to think it is such
men who forgive one day and kill the next. You never can tell where they
will explode, philosophy or no philosophy."
The Judge was right. After all the years that had passed since his wife
had left him, Jean Jacques did explode. It was the night of his birthday
party at which was present the Man from Outside. It was in the hour when
he first saw what the Clerk of the Court had seen some time before--the
understanding between Zoe and Gerard Fynes. It had never occurred to him
that there was any danger. Zoe had been so indifferent to the young men
of St. Saviour's and beyond, had always been so much his friend and the
friend of those much older than himself, like Judge Carcasson and M.
Fille, that he had not yet thought of her electing to go and leave him
alone.
To leave him alone! To be left alone--it had never become a possibility
to his mind. It did not break upon him with its full force all at once.
He first got the glimmer of it, then the glimmer grew to a glow, and the
glow to a great red light, in which his brain became drunk, and all his
philosophy was burned up like wood-shavings in a fiery furnace.
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