Walter Besant

“ Alice—you know that I have loved you all my life—will you marry me, crooked as I am? Oh! you cannot but know that I have loved you all my life. Oh! child,' he stretched forth his hands, and in his eyes there was a world of longing and of sadness which moved my heart. 'My dear, the crooked in body have no friends among men; they cannot join in their rough sports, nor drink with them, nor fight with them. They have no chance of happiness but in love, my dear. My dear, give me that chance. I love thee! Oh! my dear, give me that chance?'
Never had I seen Humphrey so moved before. ”

“ Now people fall as thick as the leaves in autumn when they are shaken by a mighty wind. Now there is a dismal solitude in London streets: every day looks with the face of a Sabbath day, observed with a greater solemnity than it used to be in the City. Now shops are shut, people rare and very few that walk about, insomuch that the grass begins to spring up in some places; there is a deep silence in every street, especially within the walls. No prancing horses, no rattling coaches, no calling on customers nor offering wares, no London cries sounding in the ears. ”

“ We are no sooner happy with those we love than we have to leave them. "We collect, but cannot enjoy; we inherit—it is but for a day; we learn, but we have no time to use our learning; we love—it is but for an hour; we pass our youth in hope, our manhood in effort, and we die before we are old; we are strong, but our strength passes like a dream; we are beautiful, but our beauty perishes in a single day. Cannot, I ask again—cannot Science prolong the Vital Force, and stay the destroying hand of Decay?" ”

“ Dering imagined—three weeks ago. Everybody will love and respect you. Then you will grow grey-headed, you poor, dear boy; and all the world will say how wise and strong you are; and I shall be prouder of my old husband than even I was of my young lover. The life that others have dreamed, we shall live. Every day shall come laden with its own joy, so that we would not, if we could help it, suffer it to go away.' She struck a deeper note, and her voice trembled and sank and her eyes filled with tears: 'Life shall be all happiness, as God intended for us. ”

“ How should we like our own girls left free to run about the streets at thirteen years of age? Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen—how can we ever forget this time?—there falls upon boy and girl alike a strange and subtle change. It is a time when the brain is full of strange new imaginings, when the thoughts go vaguely forth to unknown splendours; when the continuity of self is broken, and the lad of to-day is different from him of yesterday; when the energies, physical and intellectual, wake into new life, and impel the youth in new directions. ”

“ Now pray go on, Armorel.'
'Once there was a man,' she began, as if she was telling a story to children—and, indeed, there is no better way ever found out of beginning a story—'a man who was, in no sense at all, and could never become, try as much as he could, an artist. He was, in fact, entirely devoid of the artistic faculty: he had no ear for music or for poetry, no eye for beauty of form or for colour, no hand for drawing, no brain to conceive: he was quite a prosaic person. ”

“ I love you, Iris; I love you—I should like to say nothing more. But I must tell you as well that I am quite a poor man; I am an absolute pauper; I have nothing at all—no money, no work, nothing. My studio and all must go back to her; and yet, Iris, in spite of this, I am so selfish as to tell you that I love you. I would give you, if I could, the most delightful palace in the world, and I offer you a share in the uncertain life of an artist, who does not know whether he has any genius, or whether he is fit even to be called an artist. ”

“ The figure of Godfrey is clouded with legends and miraculous stories. We hardly seem to see, through the mist of years, the features of the short-lived David of the new kingdom. But that of Baldwin, the new Solomon of Jerusalem, stands out clear and distinct. This king, calm, cold of speech, self-reliant, like Saul, a head taller than anybody else, who will not be seen abroad without a mantle upon his shoulders, who lets his beard grow, and looks out upon the world with those keen bright eyes of his, and that strong projecting upper lip, is indeed a man, and not a shadow of history. ”

“ The brook is dead, for when man goes nature ends. I dare say there is water there still, but it is not the brook; the brook is gone like John Brown's soul. There used to be clouds over the fields, white clouds in blue summer skies. I have lived a good deal on clouds; they have been meat to me often; they bring something to the spirit which even the trees do not. I see clouds now sometimes when the iron grip of hell permits for a minute or two; they are very different clouds, and speak differently. I long for some of the old clouds that had no memories. ”

“ Angela let him have his querulous way unrebuked, because she knew the cause of it. He was suffering from that dreadful, hopeless anger which falls upon the unappreciated. He was like some poet, who brings out volume after volume, yet meets with no admirers, and remains obscure. He was like some novelist who has produced a masterpiece—which nobody will read—or like some actor (the foremost of his age) who depletes the house; or like a dramatist, from whose acted works the public fly; or like a man who invents something which is to revolutionize things. Only people prefer their old way! ”

“ Along the low and marshy shores of the Thames, as the estuary narrowed, there was not a sign of human habitation—who would dwell in the marsh when he could dwell on the land? There were no fishermen even. There were no signs of life, other than the cry of the birds whirling overhead and the plunging of the porpoise round the bows.
Presently they arrived at London. They knew it as London—not Augusta, which had been its name for a few years only. There was the bridge of which they had heard; but its planks and piles were falling into decay. ”

“ Alice knows that I have always loved her: you shall hear, presently, why I need not be ashamed and why I loved her, if I may say so, as a sister. It is possible to love a woman without thoughts of earthly love: to admire her loveliness: to respect her: to worship her: yet not as an earthly lover. Such love as Petrarch felt for Laura I felt for this sweet and lovely woman.
She gave back the child to his mother. 'Mr. Will Halliday,' she said. 'It is not only for the child that thou art blessed above other men'—looking so intently upon Alice that the poor girl blushed and was confused. ”

“ My love, my sweet—fresh as the maidens who in the old time blossomed and flowered, and presently fulfilled that condition—the only woman among us who is young in heart, let us agree to love—we two—after the old fashion, under the old conditions. Do not shiver, dear. There is the old faith to sustain us. You shall go to sea with me. Perhaps we shall be cast away and drowned; perhaps we shall contract some unknown disease and die. We shall presently lie down to sleep, and awake again in each other's arms once more in a new life which we cannot now comprehend. Everything must have an end. ”