And I
felt that all this had a very strong hold on me as the embodiment of a
beneficent and gentle spirit; that it was dear to me not as an
inheritance, but as an acquisition, as a conquest in the sense in which a
woman is conquered--by love, which is a sort of surrender.
These were strange, as if disproportionate thoughts to the matter in
hand, which was the simplest sort of a Continental holiday. And I am
certain that my companions, near as they are to me, felt no other trouble
but the suppressed excitement of pleasurable anticipation. The forms and
the spirit of the land before their eyes were their inheritance, not
their conquest--which is a thing precarious, and, therefore, the most
precious, possessing you if only by the fear of unworthiness rather than
possessed by you. Moreover, as we sat together in the same railway
carriage, they were looking forward to a voyage in space, whereas I felt
more and more plainly, that what I had started on was a journey in time,
into the past; a fearful enough prospect for the most consistent, but to
him who had not known how to preserve against his impulses the order and
continuity of his life--so that at times it presented itself to his
conscience as a series of betrayals--still more dreadful.
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