The Postmaster of Market Deignton by E. Phillips Oppenheim

It is not until I stand face to face with Lady Deignton that I realize the nature of the ordeal to which I have committed myself. All the way from Market Deignton, across the bare common-land and along the tall-hedged lanes, my thoughts have been busy with my own affairs. I have allowed myself the delicious luxury of a complete abandonment to the most sanguine imaginings. I have fancied myself a free man once more, stepping back into a world always fascinating to me, and with the full joy of living beating once more in my heart. For I was never made of the stuff whereof anchorites are fashioned. My solitude has been hateful to me; I have never found it for a moment endurable. I have none of the inherent reserve of the student and the man of letters. Nature meant me for a worker amongst my fellows, and my profession has done all that was requisite towards developing the practical part of myself. I am no dreamer or maker of books. It has been in the keen fray and the mighty struggle of intellect against intellect that I have found my happiness.

And this forced abandonment of all my ambitions, of all the great battles with science, which were the joy of my life, has been of itself, apart from its hideous cause, a source of abject misery to me. And now I am like a lost wanderer amongst the mountains, stretching up my hands to a great rift in the black clouds through which the daylight comes streaming down, and breathing out a passionate prayer that deliverance may indeed be at hand. And in these hours of waiting for the fuller daylight which means salvation I am yielding myself up to a foretaste of the joy to come. I am busy planning out the whole course of my justification. I have even dared to look beyond, to see myself in the new life which the future may hold for me: holding my place again amongst those whose companionship was once my pride, and pressing onwards towards the realization of many of the high ambitions of my younger days. And mingled with all my dreams, all my hopes, is one so sweet and so dear to me that, as I suffer my thoughts to linger upon it only for a moment, all life seems flooded with sunshine, my heart quickens, and my feet seem to be walking upon air. Oh, there is joy in the world yet--recompense even for all my sufferings, and the way at last seems clear before me! I have not once thought of the woman whose suffering must be my triumph. I have not wasted a single thought upon her. I have given myself up altogether to the unaccustomed luxury of castle-building.