touching on the open country, and knew that the icy shadow hovering
through the mist was a field, he longed for some sound and murmur of
life, and turned again to roads where pale lamps were glimmering, and the
dancing flame of firelight shone across the frozen shrubs. And the sight
of these homely fires, the thought of affection and consolation waiting
by them, stung him the more sharply perhaps because of the contrast with
his own chills and weariness and helpless sickness, and chiefly because
he knew that he had long closed an everlasting door between his heart and
such felicities. If those within had come out and had called him by his
name to enter and be comforted, it would have been quite unavailing,
since between them and him there was a great gulf fixed. Perhaps for the
first time he realized that he had lost the art of humanity for ever. He
had thought when he closed his ears to the wood whisper and changed the
fauns' singing for the murmur of the streets, the black pools for the
shadows and amber light of London, that he had put off the old life, and
had turned his soul to healthy activities, but the truth was that he had
merely exchanged one drug for another. He could not be human, and he
wondered whether there were some drop of the fairy blood in his body that
made him foreign and a stranger in the world.

He did not surrender to desolation without repeated struggles. He strove
to allure himself to his desk by the promise of some easy task; he would
not attempt invention, but he had memoranda and rough jottings of ideas
in his note-books, and he would merely amplify the suggestions ready to
his hand. But it was hopeless, again and again it was hopeless. As he
read over his notes, trusting that he would find some hint that might
light up the dead fires, and kindle again that pure flame of enthusiasm,
he found how desperately his fortune had fallen. He could see no light,
no color in the lines he had scribbled with eager trembling fingers; he
remembered how splendid all these things had been when he wrote them
down, but now they were meaningless, faded into grey. The few words he
had dashed on to the paper, enraptured at the thought of the happy hours
they promised, had become mere jargon, and when he understood the idea it
seemed foolish, dull, unoriginal. He discovered something at last that
appeared to have a grain of promise, and determined to do his best to put
it into shape, but the first paragraph appalle