CHAPTER VIII.
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Abel fled from the presence of those who seemed to him his enemies and persecutors in a state of mind impossible to describe. The excitement in him had risen beyond the bounds of endurance. All power of resistance was over, along with all possibility of making a stand against evil fortune. He was not bad enough for his rôle. He could lie by concealment, and by inference, but not directly and in so many words; and the utter self-abandonment and unspeakable humiliation of his flight meant more than mere discovery: it meant complete moral ruin and downfall. Nothing but the entire giving in and relinquishment of every hope, the sense that he had no further step to take, no expedient, no way of escape, could have overwhelmed all his powers so dismally and so completely.
