And for a while the difficulties of realization never crossed his mind.
At times he did remember that he was a lover. But the self-reproach with which he realized that he had for a time forgotten his love passed off again: a momentary remembrance, no more.
During the first days of this his new passion he was as one entranced, lifted above himself in a fervour of resolve. His soul was possessed by one thought, by a mighty dazzling dream. A glorious ray of golden light streamed into his mind, to the exclusion of all else. His soul answered to but one note—the mighty theme of self-sacrifice that rang through it.
Intoxicated with joy, he passed the long nights without sleep. At first the new, strange exultation more than outweighed the physical strain, and the grey days that came and went seemed bright and beautiful. He had never known what it was to suffer from sleeplessness; nights without sleep seemed now but an added treasure, an extended scope for happy consciousness. But soon the climax came, and his feast of dreams was at an end.
The days lost their beauty. He was weary and irritable from the moment he rose; he longed for night to come, for peace and solitude in which to dream again. But when night came and he sought to gather up once more the threads of his imaginings, his brain was dull, and his mind refused to frame new thoughts. At first he tried to content himself with merely recalling what he had dreamed before. It satisfied him for a while, but a repetition showed the things once glorious as dull and faded; he could hardly understand how he had ever been so moved by what now seemed vague and distant. And with sorrow in his heart, as for something lost, he fell asleep. Next day he resolved to watch the last night by the dead, and had obtained his wish to keep the vigil alone.
It had not dawned upon him that he had already been defeated—that the life he had resolved upon was a thing foreign to him, with no root in his soul, an abrupt departure from his natural bent and his former ways. He did not know that suffering was a gift of Fate, granted to many, yet to few in such extent that they are able to forget their own good and ill, and live for others wholly. He did not know that it is only the chosen of Sorrow who are freed from all thought of self.
Even had he grasped the truth, it would not have helped him to relinquish his ideas and admit they were but weavings of an over-sensitive mind. His nature was too stubborn to give in without a bitter struggle.
And his doubts did not come openly to begin with, but in disguise; only later, after long uncertainty and pondering, did they reveal themselves as what they were.
Irresolution, following on the tense pitch of excitement, rendered him distrustful of himself to an unwonted degree.
He sat now with bowed head, as if listening intently in a world of silence. And it seemed as if the silence spoke to him. No natural utterance, this sound that reached his ears, but an unknown tongue, a passing murmur of something mysterious—a wave that rose and fell, now loud, now low.