"I am playing a poor part by staying here!" he said with shame, and left the
house.
After wandering aimlessly about the town for some two hours, he went
resolvedly back again and stood out in the darkness, looking in at her
through the windows. There she was, unwearied, happy, not feigning; and no
more affected by what had taken place between them than a candle is affected
by a scorched insect. So it seemed to him.
This was the first time he had ever seen her at a ball. He had never
realized what powers she possessed in a field like this: what play, what
resources, what changes, what stratagems, what victories. He mournfully
missed for the first time certain things in himself that should have
corresponded with all those light and graceful things in her.
Perhaps what hurt him most were her eyes, always abroad searching for
admiration, forever filling the forever emptied honeycomb of self-love.
With him love was a sacred, a grim, an inviolate selection. He would no more
have wished the woman he had chosen to seek indiscriminate admiration with
her eyes than with her lips or her waist. It implied the same fatal flaw in
her refinement, her modesty, her faithfulness, her high breeding.
A light wind stirred the leaves of the trees overhead. A few drops of rain
fell on his hat. He drew his hand heavily across his eyes and turned away.
Reaching his room, he dropped down into a chair before his open window and
sat gazing absently into the black east.
Within he faced a yet blacker void--the ruined hopes on which the sun would
never rise again.
It was the end of everything between him and Amy: that was his one thought.
It did not occur to him even to reflect whether he had been right or wrong,
rude or gentle: it was the end: nothing else appeared worth considering.
Life to him meant a simple straightforward game played with a few well-known
principles. It must be as open as a chess-board: each player should see
every move of the other: and all who chose could look on.
He was still very young.