He did not
feel that they had any bearing whatever upon life; and his pain
seemed to infect all his perceptions. The quality of beauty in
common things, the hill-shapes, the colour of field and wood, the
lights of dawn and eve, the sailing cloud, the tints of weathered
stone, the old house in its embowered garden, with the pure green
lines of the down above, had no charm or significance for him any
more. Again and again he said to himself, "How beautiful that would
be, if I could but feel it to be so!" He saw, as clearly and
critically as ever, the pleasant forms and hues and groupings of
things, but it was dull and savourless, while all the attractive
ideas that sprang up like flowers in his mind, the happy trains of
thought, in which some single fancy ramified and extended itself
into unsuspected combinations and connections, these all seemed
hardly worth recognising or pursuing. He found himself listless and
distracted, just able by an effort to talk, to listen, to exchange
thoughts, but utterly without any zest or energy.
Jack had gone off for a short visit, and Howard was thus left
mostly alone. He went once or twice to the Vicarage, but found Mr.
Sandys an unmixed trial; there seemed something wholly puerile
about his absurd energies and activities. The only boon of his
society was that he expected no reply to his soliloquies. Maud was
there too, a distant graceful figure; but she, too, seemed to have
withdrawn into her own thoughts, and their talk was mostly formal.
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