Amalfi; and at each step he could smile with
contemptuous pity for the self which he had outlived. More than that.
When he came hither three years ago, it was with the intention of doing
certain definite work; this purpose he now at last fulfilled, thus
completing his revenge upon the by-gone obstacles, and reinstating
himself in his own good opinion, as a man who did that which he set
himself to do. At Amalfi he had made a number of studies which would be
useful; at Paestum he had worked towards a picture, such a one as had
from the first been in his mind. Yes, he was a sound man once more.

Tempestuous love is for boys, who have still to know themselves, and
for poets, who can turn their suffering into song. But to him it meant
only hindrance. Because he had been a prey to frantic desires, did he
look upon earth's beauty with a clearer eye, or was his hand endowed
with subtler craft? He saw no reason to suppose it. The misery of those
first months of northern exile--his battling with fierce winds on sea
and moorland and mountain, his grim vigils under stormy stars--had it
given him new strength? Of body perhaps; otherwise, he might have spent
the time with decidedly more of satisfaction and profit.

Let it be accepted as one of the unavoidable ills of
humanity--something that has to be gone through, like measles. But it
had come disagreeably late. No doubt he had to thank the monastic
habits of his life that it assailed him with such violence. That he had
endured it, therein lay the happy assurance that it would not again
trouble him.

If it be true that love ever has it in its power to make or mar a man,
this love that he had experienced was assuredly not of such quality.
From the first his reason had opposed it, and now that it was all over
he tried to rejoice at the circumstances which had made his desire
vain. Herein he went a little beyond sincerity; yet there were
arguments which, at all events, fortified his wish to see that
everything was well. It was not mere perversity that in the beginning
had warned him against thinking of Cecily as a possible wife for him.
Had she betrayed the least inclination to love him, such considerations
would have gone to the winds; he would have called the gods to witness
that the one perfect woman on the earth was his. But the fact of her
passionate self-surrender to Reuben Elgar, did it not prove that the
possibilities of her nature were quite other than those which could
ha