"Work," he replied. "I can always have plenty of that."
"Work?" she repeated. "Like the man in the novel who works to forget?" She pointed her finger at him, teasingly, and laughed. "Stephen, I do believe you were in love with her!"
He scowled his contempt at the weak phrase. In love with her! But then its central word struck home with the force of a new idea, and involuntarily he rose again from his seat. Her laughter stopped; her gayety changed to alarm, for he was looking at her, but he saw nothing.
"What is it?" she asked uneasily.
Love? Love! He understood. "I loved her!" he said, and then added quietly, "I love her!"
She bridled and looked down. "I too have been through that, Stephen."
But he stood staring before him. He loved!—and all was clear to him. Thence came those pains, those harsh distresses, those unappeasable longings; thence the distraction which caused his failure. Judith had set this poison in his blood. He laughed mirthlessly. How the girl had revenged herself!
But he loved! Relief came to him as he realised that no ordinary weakness, but the higher lot of man (so he had heard it called) was overpowering him. He had never been fond of any one in his life, and yet he loved! Love! That was a passion he had never expected to meet; there was no shame in falling before it—and he felt in his pain even a fierce delight. He loved the girl!
And now he knew he would never be the same man again—never could work so free of soul, never forget those high ideals of hers, nor be as mindless of the consequences of his acts. He smiled with scorn of himself as he saw how the tables had been turned on him. Meaning to win the girl, to buy her, he had instead roused a conscience, and learned that there was purity in the world. This was what they meant, then, those hitherto inexplicable fits of his: that a new nature was trying to assert itself, that a terrible discontent was aroused, that his whole life had changed, and that within an unsuspected recess of his nature there was this open wound, unhealing, draining his strength.
Where then was his boast to his enemies, of what worth his threats? Could he ever fight again as before, ever manage and plan? Again he laughed scornfully.