A Lovers' Tale by Maurice Hewlett

In those days Cormac went about the work of the place; but he was a changed man. He was fallen very silent, and grown thin and grim-looking. You never heard his voice singing about the acres or up the hill-side. He did not care to swim or to fish. He never spoke about Stangerd, but neither Thorgils nor his mother supposed that she was out of his mind. And she never was, not for a few moments together; but yet he did not go near her, or even over the hills which would lead him into the dale where Tongue was. From the top of the ridge you could see Tongue lying snug in sycamore-trees with its fields orderly about it; but Cormac would never go there now. He could not have told you why that was; but he felt that he could not.

Sometimes he reasoned with himself about it -- especially when he felt a great hunger for the sight of her, when his eyes ached for her. Then he thought -- "No, I cannot go, for I might see her. Then it might begin all over again, and end as vainly -- and I cannot go on like that. " He told himself it was certainly true that Stangerd was too beautiful for a man to marry; for what could any man do or enjoy which would be worthy of so high a possession? Lie in her bosom, mingle with her in love -- but what were such things to compare with the thought of her, which was like the wildest music, to the knowledge of her, which made the heart beat and the eyes grow dim? The things which a man could do with the woman he loved were good enough to do with common women -- the pleasure of love, the getting of children: that was the end of common desire, and filled it. But with Stangerd, who made you faint at the wonder of her -- with Stangerd, whose touch made you tremble -- such things could not be, for they would tarnish the splendour of her, and serve you little. It is better to think of kissing Stangerd than to kiss her; it is better to dream of her bosom than to lie in it; for kisses cloy, but the mind of a man endures. With such false reasoning he had to be content, for he could not bring himself to go to her. Not once did it enter his head that he was doing her a wrong. It never occurred to him that she had given him her heart before she gave him her hand; that she was in great want of him as well as wounded in her self-esteem. He could not think of such things because he could never have believed that she loved him. He put her above mankind or womankind. He said, She is a Spirit who may be loved, but cannot love. Had he loved her less, he would have had more joy of her, and she of him. That's the truth of it.