By nature and by training he was a man of action.

He tried to persuade himself that he was made for a scholar and would be happy to pass the rest of his days in the study of that history which had occupied Septimus Marvin's thoughts during a whole lifetime.
Perhaps he was right.

He might have been happy enough to pass his days thus if life were unchanging; if Septimus Marvin should never age and never die; if Miriam should be always there, with her light touch on the deeper thoughts, her half-French way of understanding the unspoken, with her steady friendship which might change, some day, into something else.
This was, of course, inconsistent.

Love itself is the most inconsistent of all human dreams; for it would have some things change and others remain ever as they are.

Whereas nothing stays unchanged for a single day: love, least of all.