Page 508 - of-human-bondage-

LXV

ayward’s visit did Philip a great deal of good. Each
Hday his thoughts dwelt less on Mildred. He looked
back upon the past with disgust. He could not understand
how he had submitted to the dishonour of such a love; and
when he thought of Mildred it was with angry hatred, be-
cause she had submitted him to so much humiliation. His
imagination presented her to him now with her defects of
person and manner exaggerated, so that he shuddered at
the thought of having been connected with her.
‘It just shows how damned weak I am,’ he said to himself.
The adventure was like a blunder that one had committed
at a party so horrible that one felt nothing could be done
to excuse it: the only remedy was to forget. His horror at
the degradation he had suffered helped him. He was like a
snake casting its skin and he looked upon the old covering
with nausea. He exulted in the possession of himself once
more; he realised how much of the delight of the world he
had lost when he was absorbed in that madness which they
called love; he had had enough of it; he did not want to be in
love any more if love was that. Philip told Hayward some-
thing of what he had gone through.
‘Wasn’t it Sophocles,’ he asked, ‘who prayed for the time
when he would be delivered from the wild beast of passion
that devoured his heart-strings?’

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