Nay, when the moment came, reason surely would have
checked his absurd impulse. In seeing her once more, he saw how wide
was the distance between them. No more of that! He had lost nothing
but a moment's illusion.
The ideal remained; the worship, the gratitude. How much she had
been to him! Rarely a day--very rarely a day--that the thought
of Irene did not warm his heart and exalt his ambition. He had
yielded to the fleshly impulse, and the measure of his lapse was the
sincerity of that nobler desire; he had not the excuse of the
ordinary man, nor ever tried to allay his conscience with facile
views of life. What times innumerable had he murmured her name,
until it was become to him the only woman's name that sounded in
truth womanly--all others cold to his imagination. What long
evenings had he passed, yonder by the Black Sea, content merely to
dream of Irene Derwent; how many a summer night had he wandered in
the acacia-planted streets of Odessa, about and about the great
square, with its trees, where stands the cathedral; how many a time
had his heart throbbed all but to bursting when he listened to the
music on the Boulevard, and felt so terribly alone--alone! Irene
was England. He knew nothing of the patriotism which is but shouted
politics; from his earliest years of intelligence he had learnt,
listening to his father, a contempt for that loud narrowness; but
the tongue which was Irene's, the landscape where shone Irene's
figure--these were dear to him for Irene's sake.
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