Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. II, 1889.djvu/284

 of his own moral strength if he should allow himself to be committed to lifelong renunciation. “I am no hero,” he said, “no enthusiast. The time when my whole being could be stirred by social questions has gone by. I am a man in love, and in proportion as my love has strengthened, so has my old artist-self revived in me, until now I can imagine no bliss so perfect as to marry Jane Snowdon and go off to live with her amid fields and trees, where no echo of the suffering world should ever reach us.” To confess this was to make it terribly certain that sooner or later the burden of conscientiousness would become intolerable. Not from Jane would support come in that event; she, poor child! would fall into miserable perplexity, in conflict between love and duty, and her life would be ruined.

Of course a man might have said, “What matter how things arrange themselves when Michael is past knowledge of them? I will marry the woman I honestly desire, and together we will carry out this humanitarian