It is difficult to do anything quite alone, anything wholly worth the doing.  That was what he was thinking.  Nearly always some other intrudes, blessedly intrudes, to give conscious, or unconscious, help.  A man puts his shoulder to the wheel, and in front of him he sees another shoulder.  And the sight gives him courage.

The thought of strenuous activity made him think of Mrs. Chepstow’s almost absolute inactivity.  He saw her sitting, always sitting, in her room, while life flowed on outside.  He saw her pale face.  That her face was carefully made pale by art did not occur to him.  And then again he thought of Mrs. Browning and of the mountain peaks.

What was he going to do?

He made a strong mental effort, as he would have expressed it, to “get himself in hand.”  Now, then, he must think it out.  And he must “hold up” his enthusiasm, and just be calm and reasonable, and even calculating.

He thought of the girl whom he had loved long ago and who had died.  Since her death he had put aside love as a passion.  Now and then—­not often—­a sort of travesty of love had come to him, the spectre of the real.  It is difficult for a young, strong man in the pride of his life never to have any dealing either with love or with its spectre.  But Isaacson was right.  Nigel’s life had been much purer than are most men’s lives.  Often he had fought against himself, and his own natural inclination, because of his great respect for love.  Not always had he conquered.  But the fights had strengthened the muscles of his will, and each fall had shown him more clearly the sadness, almost the horror, imprinted on the haggard features of the spectre of the real.

Mrs. Chepstow for years had been looking upon, had been living with, that spectre, if what was said of her was true.

And Nigel did not deceive himself on this point.  He did not sentimentally exalt a courtesan into an angel, as boys so often do.  Mrs. Chepstow had certainly lived very wrongly, in a way to excite disgust, perhaps, as well as pity.  Yet within her were delicacy, simplicity, the pride of breeding, even a curious reserve.  She had still a love of fine things.  She cared for things ethereal.  He thought of his first visit to her, the open piano, “Proficiscere, anima Christiana,” “The Scarlet Letter,” and her quotation.  What had she been thinking while she played Elgar’s curiously unearthly music, while she read Hawthorne’s pitiful book?  She had been using art, no doubt, as so many use it, as a means of escape from life.  And her escape had been not into filth or violence, not into the salons of wit, or into the salons where secrets are unveiled, but into the airy spaces with the angel, into the forest with Hester and little Pearl.

Why could they not continue friends?