It was hard to fight alone.

Alone he was, for only to one may the doors within doors be opened-only to one so dear that all else is everlastingly distant may the true tale of the life beneath life be told.

And it was not for him--nothing of this; not even the thought of it; for to think of it was to desire it, and to desire it was to reach out towards it; and to reach out towards it was the end of all.

There had been moments of abandonment to the alluring dream, such as when he wrote the verses which Lacey had sent to Hylda from the desert; but they were few.

Oft-repeated, they would have filled him with an agitated melancholy impossible to be borne in the life which must be his.
So it had been.