This exaltation is common to most men when a strong love comes to them. But to Kent it was all the intenser through the peculiarities of his nature. He had lived without the sphere of women. The passionateness of his temperament had thrown itself utterly into another channel. His work had been his love, his wife, the centre of all his energies, all his hopes. The craving for the unknown complement of existence had found satisfaction in the added line upon line, the growing bulk of manuscript, the builder's thrill when the creation of his own brain is materialising itself course by course into a majestic edifice. Besides, action, whether it was spending hours in a musty library in the exciting search after a reference, or tramping for miles in the keen mountain air of Norway, always fascinated him and compelled the entire energy of his being. He beheld the earth after his wholesome fashion and saw that it was good. To him life was complete. Things, therefore, not contained within his sphere he looked upon as superfluities. Woman was a superfluity; the impulses of sex repugnant. The very intensity of his nature made him shrink all the more strenuously from the sexual principle upon which love is built. When, however, love came to him, in spite of himself, he was dazed with it, terrified. On that January morning when he buried his face in the faint perfume of Clytie's handkerchief he felt himself overcome with a kind of horror. The fierce consciousness that he would give his soul to hold her in his arms and kiss her hair and eyes and lips was to him a torture of debasement. This morbidness was due only to the violence of the reaction. It lasted but a short while, and toned down into a feeling of disloyalty to Clytie's friendship in daring to love her. But time at last adjusted his moral balance, when it was too late, and Clytie was lost to him. And then his love was purified into a deep, passionate devotion that was its own joy and recompense. If circumstances had remained unchanged, Kent would have carried this deeper than romantic love with him to the grave. It had grown into his inmost heart, informing that subconsciousness that makes a man's individual life. Even during the last few months, when they were meeting in frank, friendly fashion, his love had altered very little in kind. He believed her to be a happy wife, loving her husband, with whom in a moment of bitterness he had once silently measured himself. The precious boon of her friendship was regained, nothing more, and it was given to him, under no false pretences on his part, but all the more tenderly because she knew of his devotion. Secure in the impression of her happiness, he would never have wavered in word or thought from his straightforward, simple loyalty, and his days would have passed in quiet contentment, saddened a little, perhaps, by regrets for what might have been, but never tormented by longings for the impossible.