He had not known himself.  He had not known her.  Even now he hardly understood that her glorious womanliness appealed to all that was highest in him, that in her presence he desired to be a Man and so seemed to himself weak and wicked.  It was not her body only, it was her soul also that he craved, that pure, clear soul of hers which shone in every tone and every word and every look and every gesture.  Beautiful she was, strong and lithe and bearing her head up always as if in stern defiance; beautiful in her cold virginity; beautiful in the latent passion that slumbered lightly underneath the pale, proud face.  But most beautiful of all to him, most priceless, most longed for, was the personality in her, the individuality which would have brought him to her were she the opposite, physically, of all she was.  He had wondered in reading sometimes of the Buddhist thoughts if it were indeed that she was his mate, that in re-incarnation after re-incarnation they had come together and found in each other the completed self.  And then he had wondered if there were indeed in him such power and forcefulness as were in her and if he were to her anything more than a rough, simple, ignorant bush fellow, in whom she was interested a little for old acquaintance sake and because of the common Cause they served.  For to himself, he had been still the same as before he ate from her hands the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.  Absorbed in his work, a zealot, a fanatic, conscious of all she had and of all he lacked, he had not noticed how his own mind had expanded, how broader ideas had come to him, how the confidence born of persistent thought gave force to his words and how the sincerity and passion that rang in his voice reached if but for a moment the hearts of men.  When he thought of her mentality he doubted that she would be his, she seemed so high above him.  It was when he thought of her solely as a Woman, when he remembered the smile of her parting, the hand-clinging that was almost a caress, the tender “Come back to me again, Ned!” that he felt himself her equal in his Manhood and dreamed his dream of how he would woo and win her.

And now!  Ah, now, he knew himself and knew her.  He realised all that he was, all that he might have been.  He would have wooed her and Nemesis struck him on the mouth, struck him dumb.

There come moments in our lives when we see ourselves.  For years, for a generation, till dying often, we live our lives and do not know except by name the Ego that dwells within.  We face death unflinchingly, as most men do, and it never speaks.  We love and we hate, with a lightness that is held civilised, and it never stirs.  We suffer and mourn and laugh and sneer and it lies hidden.  Then something stirs us to the very base of our being and self-consciousness comes.  And happy, thrice happy, in spite of all sorrow and pain, no matter what has been or what awaits him, is he to whom self-consciousness does not bring the self reproach that dieth not, the remorse that never is quite quenched.  He would have wooed and he was dumb.  For with a flash his life uprose before him.  He saw himself naked and he was ashamed.