But now there
was no margin of dreams for him beyond this daylight reality, no
holiday-time in the working-day world, no moment in the distance when
duty would take off her iron glove and breast-plate and clasp him gently
into rest. He conceived no picture of the future but one made up of
hard-working days such as he lived through, with growing contentment and
intensity of interest, every fresh week. Love, he thought, could never
be anything to him but a living memory--a limb lopped off, but not gone
from consciousness. He did not know that the power of loving was all the
while gaining new force within him; that the new sensibilities bought by
a deep experience were so many new fibres by which it was possible, nay,
necessary to him, that his nature should intertwine with another. Yet he
was aware that common affection and friendship were more precious to him
than they used to be--that he clung more to his mother and Seth, and
had an unspeakable satisfaction in the sight or imagination of any small
addition to their happiness. The Poysers, too--hardly three or four days
passed but he felt the need of seeing them and interchanging words and
looks of friendliness with them. He would have felt this, probably, even
if Dinah had not been with them, but he had only said the simplest truth
in telling Dinah that he put her above all other friends in the world.
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