And what else was this Love for which he anguished?  Irene herself, the beloved, sought with passion and with worship, what more could she give him, when all was given, than content, repose, peace?

He had been too ambitious.  It was the fault of his character, and, thus far on his life’s journey, in recognising the error might he not correct it?  Unbalanced ambition explained his ineffectiveness.  At six-and-twenty he had done nothing, and saw no hope of activity correspondent with his pride.  In Russia he had at least felt that he was treading an uncrowded path:  he had made his own a language familiar to very few western Europeans, and constantly added to his knowledge of a people moving to some unknown greatness; the position was not ignoble.  But here in London he was lost amid the uproar of striving tradesmen.  The one thing which would still have justified him, hope of wealth, had all but vanished.  He must get rid of his absurd self-estimate, see himself in the light of common day.

Peace!  He could only hope for it in marriage; but what was marriage without ideal love?  Impossible that he should ever love another woman as he had loved, as he still loved, Irene.  The ordinary man seeks a wife just as he takes any other practical step necessary to his welfare; he marries because he must, not because he has met with the true companion of his life; he mates to be quiet, to be comfortable, to get on with his work, whatever it be.  Love in the high sense between man and woman is of all things the most rare.  Few are capable of it; to fewer still is it granted.  “The crown of life!” said Jerome Otway.  A truth, even from the strictly scientific point of view; for is not a great mutual passion the culminating height of that blind reproductive impulse from which life begins?  Supreme desire; perfection of union.  The purpose of Nature translated into human consciousness, become the glory of the highest soul, uttered in the lyric rapture of noblest speech.

That, he must renounce.  But not thereby was he condemned to a foolish or base alliance.  Women innumerable might be met, charming, sensible, good, no unfit objects of his wooing; in all modesty he might hope for what the world calls happiness.  But, put it at the best, he would be doing as other men do, taking a wife for his solace, for the defeat of his assailing blood.  It was the bitterness of his mere humanity that he could not hope to live alone and faithful.  Five years ago he might have said to himself, “Irene or no one!” and have said it with the honesty of youth, of inexperience.  No such enthusiasm was possible to him now.  For the thing which is common in fable is all but unknown in life:  a man, capable of loving ardently, who for the sake of one woman, beyond his hope, sacrifices love altogether.  Piers Otway, who read much verse, had not neglected his Browning.  He knew the transcendent mood of Browning’s ideal lover—­the beatific dream of love eternal, world after world, hoping for ever, and finding such hope preferable to every less noble satisfaction.  For him, a mood only, passing with a smile and a sigh.  To that he was not equal; these heights heroic were not for his treading.  Too insistent were the flesh and blood that composed his earthly being.