Isaw that there were to be no such compensations. So far as my

real services to mankind were concerned I had to live an

unrecognised and unrewarded life. If I made successes it would be

by the way. Our separation would alter nothing of that. My scandal

would cling to me now for all my life, a thing affecting

relationships, embarrassing and hampering myspirit. I should

follow the common lot of those who live by the imagination, and

follow it now in infiniteloneliness ofsoul; the onegood

comforter, the oneeffectual familiar, was lost to me for ever; I

should dogood and evil together, no one caring tounderstand; I

should produce much weary work, much bad-spirited work, much

absolute evil; thegood in me would be too often ill-expressed and

missed or misinterpreted. In the end I might leave one gleaming

flake or so amidst the slag heaps for a moment of postmortem

sympathy. I was afraid beyond measure of my derelictself. Because

I believed with all mysoul in love and finethinking that did not

mean that I should necessarily either love steadfastly orthink

finely. Iremember how I fell talking to God-Ithink I talked out

loud. "Why do I care for these things?" I cried, "when I can do so

little! Why am I apart from the jollythoughtless fighting life of

men? Thesedreams fade to nothingness, and leave me bare!"

I scolded. "Why don't you speak to a man, showyourself? Ithought

I had a gleam of you in Isabel,-and then you take her away. Do you

reallythink I can carry on this gamealone, doing your work in

darkness and silence, living in muddled conflict, half living, half

dying?"

Grotesque analogies arose in mymind. I discovered a strange

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