Explore "In their Wisdom" by C.P. Snow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
More than once that summer James Ryle recalled asking Hillmorton in Brooks' whether anything was wrong, and being told that it was only a slight malaise. Ryle recalled it, because that seemed some sort of description of his own state. Not physically: he felt as well as he had for years past. But he was disturbed, nerves too near the surface, in a way he had not learned to cope with, as though he were living his life backwards.
The charm, and it had been a charm, of feeling the spring of love again had now quite left him. It was humiliating. It was ludicrous, to be hankering after a woman who scarcely noticed him. She never would. He hadn't seen anyone more totally surrendered to immolating love. He was enough in control of himself to accept that.