His feverish anger turned into a dull pain that was much worse. The
situation looked utterly hopeless. Masin stood still beside him
watching him with profound concern, and presently took the cup of
coffee and held it to his lips. He drank a little, like a sick man,
only half consciously, and drew back, and shook his head. Masin did
not know what to do and waited in mute distress, as a big dog, knowing
that his master is in trouble, looks up into his face and feebly wags
his sympathetic tail, just a little, at long intervals, and then keeps
quite still.
Malipieri gradually recovered his senses enough to think connectedly,
and he tried to remember whether he had ever heard of a situation like
his own. As he was neither a novelist nor a critic, he failed, and
frankly asked himself whether suicide might not be a way out of the
difficulty for Sabina. He was not an unbeliever, and he had always
abhorred and despised the idea of suicide, as most thoroughly healthy
men do when it occurs to them; but if at that time he could have
persuaded himself that his death could undo the harm he had brought
upon Sabina he would not have hesitated a moment. Neither his body nor
his soul could matter much in comparison with her good name. Hell was
full of people who had got there because they had done bad things for
their own advantage; if he went there, it would at least not be for
that.
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