life. I reviewed my past in order that I might see what causes lay there, that were likely to have an influence on my future. I faced all these causes, good or evil, fearlessly, quietly resolved to encourage those that were good, and do all that lay in me to eradicate those that were evil. The one idea that I kept constantly before me was the idea of Strength: I must be Strong.
Rosy looked upon what was already apparent as my new intercourse with her, with a somewhat suspicious eye. I believe she would far sooner have had even the old state of things with her back again. For, if my caprice leaped in evil-humoured moments far away from her; in happy-humoured moments it leaped close to her; whereas, now her line of life and mine seemed parallel; and parallel lines are those which are always the same distance from one another, that is to say, which never meet. Rosy, like the true woman she was (so it appeared to me), was quite ready to offer herself up on the altar of my happiness. It troubled her that now, instead of being, as I ought to have been, capricious, that is to say, selfish, I preserved a uniform cheerfulness of demeanour towards her; was always ready to do her little services; was always ready to prevent her doing me little services. It is true that I had in our happy period of 'lotus-eating,' as I had once called it to myself, devoted myself to her en bloc; but, as she had said, or as I had said, in so devoting myself to her en bloc ('loving' was our term) I was but devoting myself to myself en bloc, and vice versa. Then all the little services had been hers. I had been capricious; I had been selfish; and she had delighted in my capriciousness, in my selfishness—whereas, now!… Now I was the highest sinner that is arraigned by Love, the sinless one! What right had I to the preserving of an uniform cheerfulness of demeanour towards her? What right had I to the perpetual readiness to do her little services, the perpetual readiness to prevent her doing me little services? 'Ah!' thought Rosy, 'that old time was the better time; for if it knew the depth of hell, it knew also the height of heaven; whereas, this new time knows only the dead level of purgatory.'
