A man is alone when he loves, alone
when he dies; nobody cares for one so absorbed, and he cares for nobody,
no--not he! Summerhay stood by the river-wall and looked up at the
stars through the plane-tree branches. Every now and then he drew a long
breath of the warm, unstirring air, and smiled, without knowing that he
smiled. And he thought of little, of nothing; but a sweetish sensation
beset his heart, a kind of quivering lightness his limbs. He sat down on
a bench and shut his eyes. He saw a face--only a face. The lights went
out one by one in the houses opposite; no cabs passed now, and scarce a
passenger was afoot, but Summerhay sat like a man in a trance, the smile
coming and going on his lips; and behind him the air that ever stirs
above the river faintly moved with the tide flowing up.
It was nearly three, just coming dawn, when he went in, and, instead of
going to bed, sat down to a case in which he was junior on the morrow,
and worked right on till it was time to ride before his bath and
breakfast. He had one of those constitutions, not uncommon among
barristers--fostered perhaps by ozone in the Courts of Law--that can do
this sort of thing and take no harm. Indeed, he worked best in such long
spurts of vigorous concentration. With real capacity and a liking
for his work, this young man was certainly on his way to make a
name; though, in the intervals of energy, no one gave a more complete
impression of imperturbable drifting on the tides of the moment.
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