e past week that, now the crisis was there, he seemed destitute of
feeling.

His feet bore him mechanically to his favourite seat, and here he
remained, with his head in his hands, his eyes fixed on the trodden
gravel of the path. He had to learn, once and for all, that, by
tomorrow, everything would be over; for, notwithstanding the
wretchedness of the past days, he was as far off as ever from
understanding. But he was loath to begin; he sat in a kind of torpor,
conscious only of the objects his eyes rested on: some children had
built a make-believe house of pebbles, with a path leading up to the
doorway, and at this he gazed, estimating the crude architectural ideas
that had occurred to the childish builders. He felt the wind in his
hair, and listened to the soothing noise it made, high above his head.
But gradually overcoming this physical dullness, his mind began to work
again. With a sudden vividness, he saw himself as he had walked these
very woods, seven months before; he remembered the brilliant colouring
of the April day, and the abundance of energy that had possessed him.
Then, on looking into the future, all his thoughts had been of
strenuous endeavour and success. Now, success was a word like any
other, and left him cold.

For a long time, in place of passing on to his real preoccupation, he
considered this, brooding over the change that had come about in him.
Was it, he asked himself, because he had so little whole-hearted
endurance, that when once a thing was within his grasp, that grasp
slackened? Was it that he was able to make the effort required for a
leap, then, the leap over, could not right himself again? He believed
that the slackening interest, the inability to fix his attention, which
he had had to fight against of late, must have some such deeper
significance; for his whole nature--the inherited common sense of
generations--rebelled against tracing it back to the day on which he
had seen a certain face for the first time. It was too absurd to be
credible that because a slender, dark-eyed girl had suddenly come
within his range of vision, his life should thus lose form and
purpose--incredible and unnatural as well--and, in his present mood, he
would have laughed at the suggestion that this was love. To his mind,
love was something frank and beautiful, made for daylight and the sun;
whereas his condition was a source of mortification to him. To love,
without any possible hope of return; to love,