s
of temperament that intervened; and Hugh felt that for a man to say
that he loved his friends, and yet to allow this fastidious sense of
discomfort to prevent his seeing them, was as if a man said that he was
devoted to music, and yet allowed the tumult of concert-rooms to
prevent his ever going to hear music. And yet the language of
friendship was so familiar, and the power of multiplying relations with
others was so facile a thing with Hugh, that he saw that his failure in
the matter was a deplorable and a miserable thing. He was singularly
and even richly equipped for the pursuit of friendship; while his very
sensitiveness, his inherent epicureanism, which made advance so easy,
made progress impossible.

And yet he realised that it was useless to deplore this; that no amount
of desire for the larger and deeper experience would make him capable
of sustaining its pains and penalties. He saw that he was condemned to
pass through life, a smiling and courteous spectator of beauty and
delight; but that, through a real and vital deficiency of soul, he
could have no share in the inner and holier mysteries.

XX

Limitations--Sympathy--A Quiet Choice--The Mind of God--Intuition

Hitherto it had seemed to Hugh that life was a struggle to escape from
himself, from that haunting personality which, like a shadow, dogged
and imitated his movements, but all with a sombre blackness, a species
of business-like sadness of gesture, doing heavily and mechanically
what he himself did with such blitheness and joy. Again and again that
self seemed to thwart, to hinder, to check him. There were days, it
seemed to him, when a conflict was waged, an unequal conflict, between
that outer and that inner self. Days when the inner spirit was
intense, alert, eager, and when the outer self was languid, dreary,
mockingly sedate and indolent. Again there were days, and these were
the saddest of all, when the inner spirit seemed to Hugh to be
tranquil, high-minded, and strong; when that outer self was malign,
turbulent, and headstrong, and when all the resolution and vigour he
possessed, appeared to be wasted, not in following the higher aims and
imaginings with a patient purpose, but in curbing and reining the rough
and coltish nature that seemed so sadly yoked with his own. He felt on
those days like a wearied and fretful charioteer, driving through a
scene of rich and moving beauty, on which he would fain feast his eyes
and hea