e.

While he thus reflected, there seemed to flow into his mind a deep
melancholy, which, like a dark liquid dropped into clear water, began
to tinge and cloud the translucent tide. To live by a due proportion
of emotion and reason, that was the problem; but how were they to be
mingled? One seemed so isolated in the matter, so left without any
certainty of guidance. If one allowed emotion too great a latitude,
one became sentimental, unbalanced, personal; if one was swayed by
reason, one became dry, impersonal, cold. Was one indeed meant to
stumble along the track, making irreparable mistakes, seeing only in
retrospect, with a shocking clearness of vision, what one ought to have
done? Was one to regret alike impulse and prudence? And the old
faults of temperament, how they appeared and reappeared! However
clearly one saw one's mistakes, however much one admired nobleness, and
generosity, and courage, could one change the innermost character at
all? The ghastly fact was that one seemed framed to desire the
unattainable. What broken, faded, feeble things the majority of men's
lives were! The pageant of human life seemed nothing more than failure
on a gigantic scale.

Suddenly the lightning writhed and fell, the thunder broke out over
Hugh's head, as he walked in the quiet lane; a rattling, furious peal,
like leaden weights poured in a cascade upon a vast boarded floor--an
inconceivable sound, from its sharpness, its tangibility, its solidity,
to proceed from those soft regions of the air, in which a velvety
greyness dwelt suffused, with a lurid redness in the west. The rain
fell a moment afterwards in a soft sheet, leaping in the road, and
making a mist above the ground.

It was soon over, while Hugh sheltered in a big barn, with a pleasant
dark dusty roof, and high piles of fragrant straw all about him.

What a change when he stepped out! the thunder had leapt into the west,
the air was clean and sweet, and a ravishing scent came from the
satisfied fields.

With the drench of rain, something poisonous seemed to have been washed
out of Hugh's mind. All that afternoon, in the sullen heat, he had
brooded stupidly and miserably enough, picking up, as it were, dart
after dart from his little bundle of cares and miseries, and pricking
his heart with them.

Where was it all gone? In the clear fresh air he felt like a man
awaked from a nightmare, and restored to cheerful life again. What did
past failures,