to the very
edge of the sea, and there found a corner among the rocks a little
sheltered from the wind, and sat, inert and wretched; my lips salt, my
hair stiff with salt, and my body wet and cold; a miserable defeated
man. For I had now an irrational and entirely overwhelming conviction of
defeat. I saw as if I ought always to have seen that I had been pursuing
a phantom of hopeless happiness, that my dream of ever possessing Mary
again was fantastic and foolish, and that I had expended all my strength
in vain. Over me triumphed a law and tradition more towering than those
cliffs and stronger than those waves. I was overwhelmed by a sense of
human weakness, of the infinite feebleness of the individual man against
wind and wave and the stress of tradition and the ancient usages of
mankind. "We must submit," I whispered, crouching close, "we must
submit." ...

Far as the eye could reach the waves followed one another in long
unhurrying lines, an inexhaustible succession, rolling, hissing,
breaking, and tossing white manes of foam, to gather at last for a
crowning effort and break thunderously, squirting foam two hundred feet
up the streaming faces of the cliffs. The wind tore and tugged at me,
and wind and water made together a clamor as though all the evil voices
in the world, all the violent passions and all the hasty judgments were
seeking a hearing above the more elemental uproar....

Sec. 14

And while I was in this phase of fatigue and despair in Mayo, the scene
was laid and all the other actors were waiting for the last act of my
defeat in London. I came back to find two letters from Mary and a little
accumulation of telegrams and notes, one written in my flat, from
Tarvrille.

Mary's letters were neither of them very long, and full of a new-born
despair. She had not realized how great were the forces against her and
against us both. She let fall a phrase that suggested she was ill. She
had given in, she said, to save herself and myself and others from the
shame and ruin of a divorce, and I must give in too. We had to agree not
to meet or communicate for three years, and I was to go out of England.
She prayed me to accept this. She knew, she said, she seemed to desert
me, but I did not know everything,--I did not know everything,--I must
agree; she could not come with me; it was impossible. _Now_ certainly it
was impossible. She had been weak, but I did not know all. If I knew all
I should be the readier t