Diana Tempest, Volume III by Mary Cholmondeley

"And now we believe in evil Where once we believed in good. The world, the flesh, and the devil Are easily understood. " GORDON.

It seems a pity that our human destinies are too often so constituted that with our own hands we may annul in one hour -- our hour of weakness -- the long, slow work of our strength; annul the self-conquest and the renunciation of our best years. We ought to be thankful when the gate of the irrevocable closes behind us, and the power to defeat ourselves is at last taken from us. For he who has once solemnly and with conviction renounced, and then, for no new cause, has taken to himself again that which he renounced, has broken the mainspring of his life.