piled and sloped, shut and open; an enviable picture to one in my
condition. The peacefulness it indicated made scholarship seem
beautiful, attainable, I hoped. I had the sense to tell myself that it
would give me unrotting grain, though it should fail of being a
practicable road to my bright star; and when I spurned at consolations
for failure, I could still delight to think that she shone over these
harvests and the reapers.




CHAPTER XXX

A SUMMER STORM, AND LOVE

The foregoing conversations with Ottilia and her teacher, hard as they
were for passion to digest, grew luminous on a relapsing heart. Without
apprehending either their exact purport or the characters of the
speakers, I was transformed by them from a state of craving to one of
intense quietude. I thought neither of winning her, nor of aiming to win
her, but of a foothold on the heights she gazed at reverently. And if,
sometimes, seeing and hearing her, I thought, Oh, rarest soul! the wish
was, that brother and sisterhood of spirit might be ours. My other eager
thirstful self I shook off like a thing worn out. Men in my confidence
would have supposed me more rational: I was simply possessed.

My desire was to go into harness, buried in books, and for recreation to
chase visions of original ideas for benefiting mankind. A clear-wined
friend at my elbow, my dear Temple, perhaps, could have hit on the track
of all this mental vagueness, but it is doubtful that he would have