He went home and, without lighting¹ his candle, flung himself on his bed. But he got no sleep till morning; he lay hour after hour tossing, thinking, wondering; his mind had never been so active. It seemed to him his friend had laid on him in those last moments a heavy charge and had expressed herself almost as handsomely as if she had listened complacently² to an assurance of his love. It was neither easy nor delightful³ thoroughly⁴ to understand her; but little by little her perfect meaning sank into his mind and soothed⁵ it with a sense of opportunity which somehow stifled⁶ his sense of loss. For, to begin with, she meant that she could love him in no degree or contingency⁸, in no imaginable future. This was absolute—he knew he could no more alter it than he could pull down one of the constellations⁹ he lay gazing at through his open window. He wondered to what it was, in the background of her life, she had so dedicated¹⁰ herself. A conception of duty unquenchable to the end? A love that no outrage¹¹ could stifle⁷? “Great heaven!” he groaned¹²; “is the world so rich in the purest pearls of passion that such tenderness as that can be wasted for ever—poured away without a sigh into bottomless darkness?” Had she, in spite of the detestable present, some precious memory that still kept the door of possibility open? Was she prepared to submit to everything and yet to believe? Was it strength, was it weakness, was it a vulgar fear, was it conviction, conscience, constancy?

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