What he now suffered he had
known before, but with less intensity. He stared forward into the
coming years, and saw nothing that his soul desired. A life of
solitude, of bitter frustration. Were it Irene, were it another, the
woman for whom he longed would never become his. He had not the
power of inspiring love. The mere flesh would constrain him to
marriage, a sordid union, a desecration of his ideal, his worship;
and in the latter days he would look back upon a futile life. What
is life without love? And to him love meant communion with the
noblest. Nature had kindled in him this fiery ambition only for his
woe.
All the passion of the great hungry world seemed concentrated in his
sole being. Images of maddening beauty glowed upon him out of the
darkness, glowed and gleamed by he knew not what creative mandate;
faces, forms, such as may visit the delirium of a supreme artist. Of
him they knew not; they were worlds away, though his own brain
bodied them forth. He smothered cries of agony; he flung himself
upon his face, and lay as one dead.
For the men capable of passionate love (and they are few) to miss
love is to miss everything. Life has but the mockery of consolation
for that one gift denied. The heart may be dulled by time; it is not
comforted. Illusion if it be, it is that which crowns all other
illusions whereof life is made. The man must prove it, or he is born
in vain.
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