In the consideration
of Savina and himself, he discovered that they, too, were alike; yet,
while he had looked for a beauty, a quality, without a name, a
substance, Savina wanted a reality every particle of which she had
experienced and achingly knew. He, more or less, was troubled by a
vision, but her necessity was recognizable in flesh. There, it might be
again, she was more fortunate, stronger, superior. It didn't matter.
No inclination to sleep drugged the activity of his mind or promised
him the release, the medicine, of a temporary oblivion. He had a
recurrence of the rebellious spirit, in which he wondered if Grove did
sleep in the same room with Savina. And then increasingly he got what
he called a hold on himself. All that troubled him seemed to lift, to
melt into a state where the hopeless was irradiated with tender
memories. His mood changed to a pervasive melancholy in which he
recalled the lost possibilities of his early ambitions, the ambitions
that, without form or encouragement, had gone down before definite
developments. When he spoke of these, tentatively, to Fanny, she always
replied serenely that she was thankful for him as he was, she would not
have liked him to be anything queer.
But if he had met Savina first, and married her, his career would have
been something else entirely; now, probably--so fiercely their combined
flame would have burned--it would be over.
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