The most extraordinary thing that had happened
to him--though he had given that name to other matters as well--
took place, after his immediate vague stare, as a consequence of
this impression. The stranger passed, but the raw glare of his
grief remained, making our friend wonder in pity what wrong, what
wound it expressed, what injury not to be healed. What had the man
HAD, to make him by the loss of it so bleed and yet live?
Something--and this reached him with a pang--that HE, John Marcher,
hadn't; the proof of which was precisely John Marcher's arid end.
No passion had ever touched him, for this was what passion meant;
he had survived and maundered and pined, but where had been HIS
deep ravage? The extraordinary thing we speak of was the sudden
rush of the result of this question. The sight that had just met
his eyes named to him, as in letters of quick flame, something he
had utterly, insanely missed, and what he had missed made these
things a train of fire, made them mark themselves in an anguish of
inward throbs. He had seen OUTSIDE of his life, not learned it
within, the way a woman was mourned when she had been loved for
herself: such was the force of his conviction of the meaning of
the stranger's face, which still flared for him as a smoky torch.
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