a child he had been taught that no word was more
beautiful, more solemn; at this moment, he could hear it in his
father's voice, sounding as a note of music, with a tremor of deep
feeling. Peace! Every year that passed gave him a fuller understanding
of his father's devotion to that word in all its significance; he
himself knew something of the same fervour, and was glad to foster it
in his heart. Peace! What better could a man pursue? From of old the
desire of wisdom, the prayer of the aspiring soul.

And what else was this Love for which he anguished? Irene herself, the
beloved, sought with passion and with worship, what more could she give
him, when all was given, than content, repose, peace?

He had been too ambitious. It was the fault of his character, and, thus
far on his life's journey, in recognising the error might he not
correct it? Unbalanced ambition explained his ineffectiveness. At
six-and-twenty he had done nothing, and saw no hope of activity
correspondent with his pride. In Russia he had at least felt that he
was treading an uncrowded path: he had made his own a language familiar
to very few western Europeans, and constantly added to his knowledge of
a people moving to some unknown greatness; the position was not
ignoble. But here in London he was lost amid the uproar of striving
tradesmen. The one thing which would still have justified him, hope of
wealth, had all but vanished. He must get rid of his absurd
self-estimate, see himself in the light of common day.

Peace! He could only hope for it in marriage; but what was marriage
without ideal love? Impossible that he should ever love another woman
as he had loved, as he still loved, Irene. The ordinary man seeks a
wife just as he takes any other practical step necessary to his
welfare; he marries because he must, not because he has met with the
true companion of his life; he mates to be quiet, to be comfortable, to
get on with his work, whatever it be. Love in the high sense between
man and woman is of all things the most rare. Few are capable of it; to
fewer still is it granted. "The crown of life!" said Jerome Otway. A
truth, even from the strictly scientific point of view; for is not a
great mutual passion the culminating height of that blind reproductive
impulse from which life begins? Supreme desire; perfection of union.
The purpose of Nature translated into human consciousness, become the
glory of the highest soul, uttered in the lyric rapture