He did not ask whether
the change came of a truer vision or a sourer judgment, put all
down to the experience that makes a man wise, none to a loss
within. He was not able to imagine himself in anything less than he
had been, in anything less than he would be. Yet poetry was to him
now the mere munition of war! mere feathers for the darts of Cupid!
--that was how the once poetic man to himself expressed himself! He
was laying in store of weapons, he said! For when a man will use
things in which he does not believe, he cannot fail to be vulgar.
But Lady Joan saw no vulgarity in the result--it was hid in the man
himself. To her he seemed a profound lover of poetry, who knew much
of which she had never even heard. Once he contrived to spend a
whole afternoon with her in the library, for of the outsides of
books, their title-pages, that is, he had a good deal of knowledge,
and must make opportunity to show it. One of his patients, with
whom he first travelled, then for a time resided, was a
book-collector, and with him he learned much, chiefly from
old-book-catalogues. With Lady Joan this learning, judiciously
poured out, passed for a marvellous knowledge of books, and the
country doctor began to assume in her eyes the proportions of a man
of universal culture. He knew at least how to bring all he had into
use, and succeeded in becoming something in the sweet lonely life,
so ignorant and unsupported.
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