If he could but feel at all times as he had felt at moments in Maud's presence.

It might be that the growth of intimacy, of mutual knowledge, would make his love for her a more real motive in his life.

He would endeavour that it should be so.

Yet there remained that fatal conviction of the unreality of every self-persuasion save in relation to the influences of the moment.

To love was easy, inevitable; to concentrate love finally on one object might well prove, in his case, an impossibility.
Clear enough to him already was the likelihood of a strong revulsion of feeling when Ida once more came back, and the old life--if it could be--was resumed.