had hardened his spirit in a resolute desperation: the suicidal fatalism—that hunger for death which all men have in them and which is perhaps as strong a driving-force in man as the hunger for life—and which had been strongly marked in Robert only when he was drunk—had now become the habit of his soul. He no longer cared whether he lived or died, in his inmost heart he had grown amorous of death, and it was evident that living flesh and bone could not much longer endure the cruel beating he had given it. And this fact—this shocking, visible, physical fact—as much as anything—sealed him in fatal desperation, confirmed him in his belief that everything was lost.
LI
Man’s youth is a wonderful thing: it is so full of anguish and of magic and he never comes to know it as it is, until it has gone from him for ever. It is the thing he cannot bear to lose, it is the thing whose passing he watches with infinite sorrow and regret, it is the thing whose loss he must lament for ever, and it is the thing whose loss he really welcomes with a sad and secret joy, the thing he would never willingly re-live again, could it be restored to him by any magic.
Why is this? The reason is that the strange and bitter miracle of life is nowhere else so evident as in our youth. And what is the essence of that strange and bitter miracle of life which we feel so poignantly, so unutterably, with such a bitter pain and joy, when we are young? It is this: that being rich, we are so poor; that being mighty, we can yet have nothing, that seeing, breathing, smelling, tasting all around us the impossible wealth and glory of this earth, feeling with an intolerable certitude that the whole structure of the enchanted life—the most fortunate, wealthy, good, and happy life that any man has ever known—is ours—is ours at once, immediately and for ever, the moment that we choose to take a step, or stretch a hand, or say a word—we yet know that we can really keep, hold, take, and possess for ever—nothing. All passes; nothing lasts: the moment that we put our hand upon it it melts away like smoke, is gone for ever, and the snake is eating at our heart again; we see then what we are and what our lives must come to.
A young man is so strong, so mad, so certain, and so lost. He has everything and he is able to use nothing. He hurls the great shoulder of his strength for ever against phantasmal barriers, he is a wave whose power
