The longer he kept apart from Annabel, the dimmer did the vision of her become; he held it a sign that he himself was seldom if ever in her mind.

Did he still love her?
Rather he would have said that there lay in him great faculty of love, which Annabel, if she willed it, could at a moment bring into life; she, he believed, in preference to any woman he had known.

It was not passion, and the consciousness that it was not, often depressed him.

One of his ideals was that of a passion nurtured to be the crowning glory of life.

He did not love Annabel in that way; would that he could have done! This purely personal distress could not but affect his work.