He had in his pocket a shilling edition of Keats's poems which he had bought in Bristol by way of a silent companion to his thoughts, and he took it out and opened it now, reading and re-reading some of the lines most dear and familiar to him, when, as a boy, he had elected this poet, so wickedly done to death ere his prime by commonplace critics, as one of his chief favourites among the highest Singers.

And his lips, half-murmuring, followed the verse which tells of that "untrodden region of the mind, Where branched thoughts, new-grown with pleasant pain, Instead of pines, shall murmur in the wind; Far, far around shall these dark clustered trees, Fledge the wild ridged mountains steep by steep, And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds and bees, The moss-lain Dryads shall be lulled to sleep; And in the midst of this wide quietness, A rosy sanctuary will I dress With the wreathed trellis of a working brain, With buds and bells and stars without a name, With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign, Who, breeding flowers, will never breed the same; And there shall be for thee all soft delight, That shadowy thought can win, A bright torch and a casement ope at night, To let the warm Love in!" A slight sigh escaped him.
"How perfect is that stanza!" he said.

"How I used to believe in all it suggested! And how, when I was a young man, my heart was like that 'casement ope at night, to let the warm Love in!' But Love never came,--only a spurious will-o'-the-wisp imitation of Love.

I wonder if many people in this world are not equally deceived with myself in their conceptions of this divine passion?
All the poets and romancists may be wrong,--and Lucy Sorrel, with her hard materialism encasing her youth like a suit of steel armour, may be right.

Boys and girls 'love,' so they say,--men and women 'love' and marry--and with marriage, the wondrous light that led them on and dazzled them, seems, in nine cases out of ten, to suddenly expire! Taking myself as an example, I cannot say that actual marriage made me happy.