Eyes that were beautiful, and their beauty was not for him;
a spirit that was bright and glowing, but the brightness and the glow
might not renew his days. It was hard to fight alone. Alone he was, for
only to one may the doors within doors be opened-only to one so dear that
all else is everlastingly distant may the true tale of the life beneath
life be told. And it was not for him--nothing of this; not even the
thought of it; for to think of it was to desire it, and to desire it was
to reach out towards it; and to reach out towards it was the end of all.
There had been moments of abandonment to the alluring dream, such as when
he wrote the verses which Lacey had sent to Hylda from the desert; but
they were few. Oft-repeated, they would have filled him with an agitated
melancholy impossible to be borne in the life which must be his.
So it had been. The deeper into life and its labours and experiences he
had gone, the greater had been his temptations, born of two passions, one
of the body and its craving, the other of the heart and its desires: and
he had fought on--towards the morning.
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