It was to her as if pure
lightning, flash after flash, went through every fibre of her, till
extinction came.
But it is the fate of human beings to live on. And it is the fate of
clouds that seem nothing but bits of vapour slowly to pile up, to pile up
and fill the heavens and blacken the sun entirely.
So it was. The love came back, the lightning of passion flashed
tremendously between them. And there was blue sky and gorgeousness for a
little while. And then, as inevitably, as inevitably, slowly the clouds
began to edge up again above the horizon, slowly, slowly to lurk about
the heavens, throwing an occasional cold and hateful shadow: slowly,
slowly to congregate, to fill the empyrean space.
And as the years passed, the lightning cleared the sky more and more
rarely, less and less the blue showed. Gradually the grey lid sank down
upon them, as if it would be permanent.
Why didn't Egbert do something, then? Why didn't he come to grips with
life? Why wasn't he like Winifred's father, a pillar of society, even if
a slender, exquisite column? Why didn't he go into harness of some sort?
Why didn't he take _some_ direction?
Well, you can bring an ass to the water, but you cannot make him drink.
The world was the water and Egbert was the ass. And he wasn't having any.
He couldn't: he just couldn't. Since necessity did not force him to work
for his bread and butter, he would not work for work's sake.
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