But there was another cause,
which of itself sufficed to keep him going. I may have said--or given the
impression--that he utterly despaired of ever getting anything worth
having out of life. And so he would have, I dare say, but for the
not-entirely-quenchable spark of hope which youth keeps in reserve
somewhere, and which in his case had one peculiar thing to sustain it.
"That peculiar thing, on which his spark of hope kept alive, though its
existence was hardly noticed by the man himself, was a certain idea which
he had conceived,--he no longer knew when, nor in what mental
circumstances. It was an idea at first vague; relegated to the cave of
things for the time forgotten, to be occasionally brought forth by
association. Sought or unsought, it came forth with a sudden new
attractiveness some time after Murray Davenport's life and self had grown
to look most dismal in his eyes. He began to turn it about, and develop
it. He was doing this, all the while fascinated by the idea, at the time
of Larcher's acquaintance with him, but doing it in so deep-down a region
of his mind that no one would have suspected what was beneath his
languid, uncaring manner. He was perfecting his idea, which he had
adopted as a design of action for himself to realize,--perfecting it to
the smallest incidental detail.
"This is what he had conceived: Man, as everybody knows, is more or less
capable of voluntary self-illusion. By pretending to himself to believe
that a thing is true--except where the physical condition is concerned,
or where the case is complicated by other people's conduct--he can give
himself something of the pleasurable effect that would arise from its
really being true.
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