Explore "The Broad Highway" by Jeffery Farnol on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
On I went, chin on breast, heedless of all direction -- now beneath the shade of trees, now crossing grassy glades or rolling meadow, or threading my way through long alleys of hop-vines; on and on, skirting hedges, by haycocks looming ghostly in the dark, by rustling cornfields, through wood and coppice, where branches touched me, as I passed, like ghostly fingers in the dark; on I went, lost to all things but my own thoughts. And my thoughts were not of Life nor Death nor the world nor the spaces beyond the world -- but of my Virgil book with the broken cover, and of him who had looked at it -- over her shoulder. And, raising my hands, I clasped them about my temples, and, leaning against a tree, stood there a great while. Yet, when the trembling fit had left me, I went on again, and with every footstep there rose a voice within me, crying: "Why? Why? Why?"
Why should I, Peter Vibart, hale and well in body, healthy in mind -- why should I fall thus into ague-spasms because of a woman -- of whom I knew nothing, who had come I knew not whence, accompanied by one whose presence, under such conditions, meant infamy to any woman; why should I burn thus in a fever if she chose to meet another while I was abroad? Was she not free to follow her own devices; had I any claim upon her; by what right did I seek to compass her goings and comings, or interest myself in her doings? Why? Why? Why?