was not yet content to be there. He was
content to be thought a person who could have feelings that started and
ended in others--even as a young man he had worked for that; but he had
not filled in his background with anything that satisfied the portion of
himself, which, even if a man live for others ever so completely, still
clamours for satisfaction. Every part of him that was in relation to
others had adjusted, but that one spot which always answers to the self
alone was merely going on from day to day as best it could. He was
content to have no burning emotions, no strong longings, to be
considered less important than themselves by all the younger people
amongst whom he lived, but within him the voice that says "I am I ... I
still want something for myself alone, some solution of the riddle,
something to make up for loss of youth and beauty and strength," still
stirred and muttered. Not prosperity, not children, not a wife who took
step by step with him, could give this, or even help him to find out
what it was. Not his memory of what the Parson had lived and died by
could fill him wholly; he had not yet come to that perfect satisfaction,
life was too insistent in him. Not in the next world, or in any personal
contact, however intimate, in this, could the stuff of life be found. He
had imagined while Nicky was away that after all he too had attained the
personal fusion that most people seemed to cling to as the chief support
in life, but now he knew that that way was not for him any more than
for any other at the loneliest pass.

A few days after Nicky's triumphant election, when thought was once more
possible at Cloom, Ishmael felt more depressed than he had for long; he
had been living not so much in the valleys as upon the straight plains
of late. To-day his eyes were hurting him and he could not read; there
was no work crying to be done, and the heavy warm air was misted with
damp that seemed to melt into the bones. He went out, shaking off
Georgie's protests, and struck up the valley leading from the sea. The
old mood was on him that had recurred again and again through life--the
mood when nothing would satisfy but to go out alone and walk and walk
and breathe in peace from earth and air. He went on, not walking fast,
for the depression that was on him was not like a definite grief that
urges the body to fierce exertion, and as he went it was as though he
had neglected the charm too long and it was going to fai