WISDOM
After another day the turmoil subsided and Anthony began to exercise a
measure of reason. He was in love--he cried it passionately to himself.
The things that a week before would have seemed insuperable obstacles,
his limited income, his desire to be irresponsible and independent, had
in this forty hours become the merest chaff before the wind of his
infatuation. If he did not marry her his life would be a feeble parody
on his own adolescence. To be able to face people and to endure the
constant reminder of Gloria that all existence had become, it was
necessary for him to have hope. So he built hope desperately and
tenaciously out of the stuff of his dream, a hope flimsy enough, to be
sure, a hope that was cracked and dissipated a dozen times a day, a hope
mothered by mockery, but, nevertheless, a hope that would be brawn and
sinew to his self-respect.
Out of this developed a spark of wisdom, a true perception of his own
from out the effortless past.
"Memory is short," he thought.
So very short. At the crucial point the Trust President is on the stand,
a potential criminal needing but one push to be a jailbird, scorned by
the upright for leagues around.
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