Journeying down by the mail-train in the face of a great sunken sunset
broken with cloud, I chanced to ask myself what it was that I seriously
desired to have. My purpose to curb my father was sincere and good; but
concerning my heart's desires, whitherward did they point? I thought of
Janet--she made me gasp for air; of Ottilia, and she made me long for
earth. Sharp, as I write it, the distinction smote me. I might have
been divided by an electrical shot into two halves, with such an equal
force was I drawn this way and that, pointing nowhither. To strangle the
thought of either one of them was like the pang of death; yet it did not
strike me that I loved the two: they were apart in my mind, actually as
if I had been divided. I passed the Riversley station under sombre
sunset fires, saddened by the fancy that my old home and vivacious Janet
were ashes, past hope. I came on the smell of salt air, and had that
other spirit of woman around me, of whom the controlled seadeeps were an
image, who spoke to my soul like starlight. Much wise counsel, and
impatience of the wisdom, went on within me. I walked like a man with a
yawning wound, and had to whip the sense of passion for a drug. Toward
which one it strove I know not; it was blind and stormy as the night.

Not a boatman would take me across. The lights of the island lay like a
crown on the water. I paced the ramparts, eyeing them, breathing the
keen salt of thundering waves, until they were robbed of their magic by
the coloured Fast.

It is, I have learnt, out of the conflict of sensations such as I then
underwent that a young man's brain and morality, supposing him not to
lean overmuch to sickly sentiment, becomes gradually enriched and
strengthened, and himself shaped for capable manhood. I was partly
conscious of a better condition in the morning; and a sober morning it
was to me after my long sentinel's step to and fro. I found myself