lt to
explain; certain it was that as he sat there he dreamt, awake, of an
unhappy woman who strolled by the slow-flowing stream before him and who
pulled down the fruit-laden boughs in the orchards. He mused and mused,
and at last found himself quite angry that he couldn't somehow think
worse of Madame de Mauves--or at any rate think otherwise. He could
fairly claim that in the romantic way he asked very little of life--made
modest demands on passion: why then should his only passion be born
to ill fortune? Why should his first--his last--glimpse of positive
happiness be so indissolubly linked with renunciation?

It is perhaps because, like many spirits of the same stock, he had
in his composition a lurking principle of sacrifice, sacrifice for
sacrifice's sake, to the authority of which he had ever paid due
deference, that he now felt all the vehemence of rebellion. To renounce,
to renounce again, to renounce for ever, was this all that youth and
longing and ardour were meant for? Was experience to be muffled and
mutilated like an indecent picture? Was a man to sit and deliberately
condemn his future to be the blank memory of a regret rather than the
long possession of a treasure? Sacrifice? The word was a trap for minds
muddled by fear, an ignoble refuge of weakness. To insist now seemed not
to dare, but simply to BE, to live on possible terms.

His hostess came out to hang a moist cloth on the hedge, and, though her
guest was sitting quietly enough, she might have imagined in his kindled
eyes a flattering testimony to the quality of her wine. As she turned
back into the house she was met by a young man of whom Longmore took
note in spite of his high distraction. He was evidently a member of that
jovial fraternity of artists whose very shabbiness has an affinity with
the unestablished and unexpected in life--the element often gazed at
with a certain wistfulness out of the curtained windows even of the
highest respectability. Longmore was struck first with his looking like
a very clever man and then with his looking like a contented one. The
combination, as it was expressed in his face, might have arrested the
attention of a less exasperated reasoner. He had a slouched hat and a
yellow beard, a light easel under one arm, and an unfinished sketch in
oils under the other. He stopped and stood talking for some moments to
the landlady, while something pleasant played in his face. They were
discussing the possibilities of