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And to that end of self-obliteration he instantly applied himself, with outward calm, but with the mental hurry and restlessness of increasing illness. His first duty was to end the whole matter of his relation to Helen, Helen shorn of her divinity, convicted liar and wanton, yet mistress still for him, as he feared, of mighty enchantments. So he wrote to her very briefly.
With the free and joyous step of a vigorous youth not yet tamed to complete self-obliteration, next there stepped forth into the sun a group of seminarists. In the lace and scarlet of their bright robes they were like unto so many young kings.
Oaths have their brief periods of ascendency, and philology can boast its fashion-plates. The tyrant Fashion, who wields for whip the fear of solitude, is shepherd to the flock of common talkers, as they run hither and thither pursuing, not self-expression, the prize of letters, but unanimity and self-obliteration, the marks of good breeding.
Here too, most of the "brittle stars" are self-conscious to the point of self-obliteration.
Had he really appreciated the words "torment" and "infinite;" had he really put into "torment" the pangs of a cancer or a death through thirst; had he really put twenty years into "infinity," he would perhaps have recoiled. Nevertheless, the fact remains that this man by some means or other had educated himself into complete self-obliteration for the sake of his child.
When the women pressed around him, shaking his hands, declaring that he had saved their daughters' lives, Annixter assumed a pose of superb deprecation, the modest self-obliteration of the chevalier. He delivered himself of a remembered phrase, very elegant, refined. It was Lancelot after the tournament, Bayard receiving felicitations after the battle.
London and Paris have rubbed off all their old angles and made themselves, notwithstanding the existence of Gothic corners here and there, all modern, to the extinction of most of the characteristic features of their former living. But happy peculiarities of situation have saved our northern capital from any such self-obliteration.
There, when the blow came at last, Flora's melodious grievings were soon over, and her sweet reasonableness, her tender exculpation not alone of this dear friend but even of the silly fellows who had done the deed, and her queenly, patriotic self-obliteration, were more admirable than can be described. Were, as one may say, good literature.
But you wouldn't understand !" he broke off, and slowly regained his usual air of self-obliteration; he even seemed ashamed, and began trying to brush his moustaches higher than ever, as if aware that his heat had robbed them of neatness. "I'm not myself, when I speak of such matters," he said suddenly; and began reading his programme, holding it upside down.
It was a natural survival of those anxious days of waiting in solitude for his safe return. For Mrs. Bittacy, daughter of an evangelical clergy-man, was a self-sacrificing woman, who in most things found a happy duty in sharing her husband's joys and sorrows to the point of self-obliteration. Only in this matter of the trees she was less successful than in others.
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