He came back to this:--his one hour had as good a claim to insight as
his other; if he saw the thing so once, why not say what he had seen?
Why should not the thing stand? His consciousness of the night before
had certainly been nearer that of a complete, capable being, than that
of to-day! He was in higher human condition then than now!

But there came another doubt: what was he to conclude concerning his
other numerous judgments passed irrevocably? Was he called and appointed
to influence the world's opinion of the labor of hundreds according to
the mood he happened to be in, or the hour at which he read their
volumes? But if he must write another judgment of that poem in vellum
and gold, he must first pack his portmanteau! To write in her home as he
felt now, would be treachery!

Not confessing it, he was persuading himself to send on the review. Of
course, had he the writing of it now, he would not write a paper like
that! But the thing being written, it could claim as good a chance of
being right as another! Had it not been written as honestly as another
of to-day would be? Might it not be just as true? The laws of art are so
undefined!

Thus on and on went the windmill of heart and brain, until at last the
devil, or the devil's shadow--that is, the bad part of the man
himself--got the better, and Walter, not being true, did a
lie--published the thing he would no longer have said. He thought he
worshiped the truth, but he did not. He knew that the truth was
everything, but a lie came that seemed better than the truth. In his
soul he knew he was not acting truly; that had he honestly loved the
truth, he would not have played hocus-pocus with metaphysics and logic,
but would have made haste to a manly conclusion. He took the package,