Hamilton now marvelled at himself. The whole fruit of his forty
years of life--all that accomplished work, success, wealth,
rewarded worth, satisfied ambition, all the pleasures his youth,
his health and strength, and powers had always brought him, crushed
together--could not equal this: the charm and ecstasy with which he
gazed down on this warm beauty of the flesh beside him.

And yet he knew that it was not really in that flesh, not even in
that beauty, that lay the delight. It was in himself, in his own
intense desire, and the gratification of it, that the joy had
birth; and if the gods give not this desire, no matter what else
they give, it is useless.

The girl might have been as lovely, Hamilton himself, and all the
circumstances the same, yet waking thus he might have been but the
ordinary poor, cold, clay-like mortal a man usually is. But the
great desire for this beauty that had flamed up within him, now in
its possession, gave him that fervour and fire, those wings to his
soul, that seemed to make him divine. It was for him one of those
moments for which men live a life-time, as he indeed had done, but
they repay him when they come. To some, they come never. To these
life must indeed be dark.

Suddenly the girl opened her eyes; the fire in his bent upon her
seemed to electrify and thrill her into life, and with a little
murmur of delight she stretched up her rounded arms to him.

At breakfast Hamilton regretted he should have to leave her all
day; what would she do?