Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1897. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XXIII An End And A Beginning In the middle of the night he broke down utterly. If he had been a strong man he would not have yielded to the series of temptations that had culminated in his crime and his disgrace. Or, passing that, his spirit would not have been broken during the months of his punishment. If he had been even of slightly robuster fibre, the sense of degradation would not have palsied his life. He would have gone at once to a new land and made himself master of his destiny. A strong man would not have been found by Yvonne, that August morning, sitting, a self-abhorring outcast before his rich uncle's door. He would not have lost his wit and courage, when assailed by his prison companion at Hull. He would not have joined fortunes with Noakes in their futile African expedition. A strong man would not have clung for comfort and moral support to the poor ridiculous creature, his own protection of whom was that of the woman rather than that of the man. A strong man would not have yielded to the numbing despair of the after solitude in Africa, norwrithed that night in agony of spirit upon the lonely star-lit veldt. And lastly, a strong man would not have had that terror of loneliness which had made him in the first place cling to Yvonne much as a child, afraid of the dark, clings to the hand of another child weaker than itself. By the law of evolution the strong survive and the weak die. But in the eternal struggle between humanity and the pitiless law, conditions are modified, and the sympathy of the race, that expression of revolt which we call civilisation, gives surviving power to the weak, so that not only the strong man has claims to life and love. And when the weak man strives with all his quivering fibres towards strength, he is doing a greater deed than the ...