Was it--was it possible--that there was some vital
connection between them? As the singing of birds in the pairing
season, was his genius merely a rather peculiar symptom of the very
ordinary condition known as falling in love? So that, failing that
source of inspiration--? That no doubt _was_ what was the matter with
him. His imagination languished because his passion for Poppy was
played out, and he had nothing to put in its place.
Well, yes, there was something; something that was not an instinct or
a passion, but an acquired taste. To be sure he had acquired it very
quickly, it had only taken him three days. In those three days he had
developed a preference for the society of ladies (the women of his own
class were not ladies but "young ladies," a distinction he now
appreciated for the first time). It was a preference that, as things
stood, he would never be able to gratify; there was something about it
ruinous and unhappy, like a craze for first editions in an impecunious
scholar, for ever limited to the twopenny bundle and the eighteenpenny
lot. He could not hope to enjoy Miss Harden's society for more than
three weeks at the outside. He only enjoyed it at all through an
accident too extraordinary, too fantastic to occur again. Between him
and her there stood the barrier of the counter. The barrier itself was
not insuperable: he might get over the counter, so might Miss Harden;
but there were other things that she never could get over.
Pages:
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175