Page 141 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

knife had probed deeply into his disclosed conscience and
he felt now that his soul was festering in sin. Yes, the preach-
er was right. God’s turn had come. Like a beast in its lair his
soul had lain down in its own filth but the blasts of the an-
gel’s trumpet had driven him forth from the darkness of sin
into the light. The words of doom cried by the angel shat-
tered in an instant his presumptuous peace. The wind of the
last day blew through his mind, his sins, the jewel-eyed har-
lots of his imagination, fled before the hurricane, squeaking
like mice in their terror and huddled under a mane of hair.
As he crossed the square, walking homeward, the light
laughter of a girl reached his burning ear. The frail gay
sound smote his heart more strongly than a trumpet blast,
and, not daring to lift his eyes, he turned aside and gazed,
as he walked, into the shadow of the tangled shrubs. Shame
rose from his smitten heart and flooded his whole being.
The image of Emma appeared before him, and under her
eyes the flood of shame rushed forth anew from his heart.
If she knew to what his mind had subjected her or how his
brute-like lust had torn and trampled upon her innocence!
Was that boyish love? Was that chivalry? Was that poetry?
The sordid details of his orgies stank under his very nostrils.
The soot-coated packet of pictures which he had hidden in
the flue of the fireplace and in the presence of whose shame-
less or bashful wantonness he lay for hours sinning in
thought and deed; his monstrous dreams, peopled by ape-
like creatures and by harlots with gleaming jewel eyes; the
foul long letters he had written in the joy of guilty confes-
sion and carried secretly for days and days only to throw

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