or the equal mate, so far stronger and more subtle than any
reasonable or intellectual friendship. And then he, devoured as he had
been by his love, had been unable to use his faculties; he could do
nothing but glare and wink, while his treasure was stolen from him; he
had made mistakes at every turn. What would he not give now to be
restored to his old, balanced, easy life, with its little friendships
and duties. How fantastic and unreal his aunt's theories seemed to him,
reveries contrived just to gild the gaps of a broken life, a
dramatisation of emptiness and self-importance. At every moment the
face and figure of Maud came before him in a hundred sweet, spontaneous
movements--the look of her eyes, the slow thrill of her voice. He
needed her with all his soul--every fibre of his being cried out for
her. And then the thought of being thus pitifully overcome, humiliated
and degraded him. If she had not been beautiful, he would perhaps never
have thought of her except with a mild and courteous interest. This was
the draught of life which he had put so curiously to his lips, sweet
and heady to taste, but with what infinite bitterness and disgust in
the cup. It had robbed him of everything--of his work, of his temperate
ecstasies in sight and sound, of his intellectual enthusiasm. His life
was all broken to pieces about him; he had lost at once all interest
and all sense of dignity. He was simply a man betrayed by a passion,
which had fevered him just because his life had been so orderly and
pure. He was not strong enough even to cut himself adrift from it all.
He must just welter on, a figure visibly touched by depression and
ill-fortune, and hammering out the old grammar-grind. Had any writer,
any poet, ever agonised thus? The people who discoursed glibly about
love, and wove their sorrows into elegies, what sort of prurient curs
were they? It was all too bad to think of, to speak of--a mere
staggering among the mudflats of life.

In this raging self-contempt and misery, he drew near to the still pool
in the valley; he would sit there and bleed awhile, like the old
warrior, but with no hope of revisiting the fight: he would just
abandon himself to listless despair for an hour or two, while the
pleasant drama of life went on behind him. Why had he not at least
spoken to Maud, while he had time, and secured her loyalty? It was his
idiotic deliberation, his love of dallying gently with his emotions,
getting the best he co