a bench against the pink wall, in the sun, which was not too hot. Here,
as he rested and gazed and mused, he fell into a train of thought which,
in an indefinable fashion, was a soft influence from the scene about
him. His heart, which had been beating fast for the past three hours,
gradually checked its pulses and left him looking at life with rather a
more level gaze. The friendly tavern sounds coming out through the open
windows, the sunny stillness of the yellowing grain which covered so
much vigorous natural life, conveyed no strained nor high-pitched
message, had little to say about renunciation--nothing at all about
spiritual zeal. They communicated the sense of plain ripe nature,
expressed the unperverted reality of things, declared that the common
lot isn't brilliantly amusing and that the part of wisdom is to grasp
frankly at experience lest you miss it altogether. What reason there was
for his beginning to wonder after this whether a deeply-wounded heart
might be soothed and healed by such a scene, it would be difficult to
explain; certain it was that as he sat there he dreamt, awake, of an
unhappy woman who strolled by the slow-flowing stream before him and who
pulled down the fruit-laden boughs in the orchards. He mused and mused,
and at last found himself quite angry that he couldn't somehow think
worse of Madame de Mauves--or at any rate think otherwise. He could
fairly claim that in the romantic way he asked very little of life--made
modest demands on passion: why then should his only passion be born to
ill fortune? Why should his first--his last--glimpse of positive
happiness be so indissolubly linked with renunciation?

It is perhaps because, like many spirits of the same stock, he had in
his composition a lurking principle of sacrifice, sacrifice for
sacrifice's sake, to the authority of which he had ever paid due
deference, that he now felt all the vehemence of rebellion. To renounce,
to renounce again, to renounce for ever, was this all that youth and