" He had soon finished reading of "The Cyprian" and her
revenge, and looked at the sky instead. And watching the white clouds
so bright against the intense blue, Ashurst, on his silver-wedding day,
longed for--he knew not what. Maladjusted to life--man's organism! One's
mode of life might be high and scrupulous, but there was always an
undercurrent of greediness, a hankering, and sense of waste. Did
women have it too? Who could tell? And yet, men who gave vent to their
appetites for novelty, their riotous longings for new adventures, new
risks, new pleasures, these suffered, no doubt, from the reverse side
of starvation, from surfeit. No getting out of it--a maladjusted
animal, civilised man! There could be no garden of his choosing, of
"the Apple-tree, the singing, and the gold," in the words of that
lovely Greek chorus, no achievable elysium in life, or lasting haven
of happiness for any man with a sense of beauty--nothing which could
compare with the captured loveliness in a work of art, set down for
ever, so that to look on it or read was always to have the same precious
sense of exaltation and restful inebriety. Life no doubt had moments
with that quality of beauty, of unbidden flying rapture, but the trouble
was, they lasted no longer than the span of a cloud's flight over the
sun; impossible to keep them with you, as Art caught beauty and held it
fast.
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