Thanks to Elgar, her meditations had a dark background such as her own fancy would never have supplied.
He knew not how sadly the image of him had been blurred in Cecily's mind, the man who lay that night in his room overlooking the port.
Whether such ignorance were for his aid or his disadvantage, who shall venture to say?
To a certain point, we may follow with philosophic curiosity, step by step, the progress of mental anguish, but when that point is passed, analysis loses its interest; the vocabulary of pain has exhausted itself, the phenomena already noted do but repeat themselves with more rapidity, with more intensity--detail is lost in the mere sense of throes.

Perchance the mind is capable of suffering worse than the fiercest pangs of hopeless love combined with jealousy; one would not pretend to put a limit to the possibilities of human woe; but for Mallard, at all events this night did the black flood of misery reach high-water mark.
What joy in the world that does not represent a counter-balance of sorrow?
What blessedness poured upon one head but some other must therefore lie down under malediction?
We know that with the uttermost of happiness there is wont to come a sudden blending of troublous humour.

May it not be that the soul has conceived a subtle sympathy with that hapless one but for whose sacrifice its own elation were impossible?
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