and found an unmixed joy in histask
He knew enough of his subject to know that he did not knowenough to write about it; but he consoled himself by rememberingthat Wilhelm Meister has survived many weighty volumes onaesthetics; and between his moments of self-disgust he tookhimself at Susy’s valuation, and found an unmixed joy in histask.
Never–no, never!–had he been so boundlessly, so confidentlyhappy. His hack-work had given him the habit of application,and now habit wore the glow of inspiration. His previousliterary ventures had been timid and tentative: if this one wasgrowing and strengthening on his hands, it must be because theconditions were so different. He was at ease, he was secure, hewas satisfied; and he had also, for the first time since hisearly youth, before his mother’s death, the sense of having someone to look after, some one who was his own particular care, andto whom he was answerable for himself and his actions, as he hadnever felt himself answerable to the hurried and indifferentpeople among whom he had chosen to live.
Susy had the same standards as these people: she spoke theirlanguage, though she understood others, she required theirpleasures if she did not revere their gods. But from the momentthat she had become his property he had built up in himself aconception of her answering to some deep-seated need ofveneration. She was his, he had chosen her, she had taken herplace in the long line of Lansing women who had been loved,honoured, and probably deceived, by bygone Lansing men. Hedidn’t pretend to understand the logic of it; but the fact thatshe was his wife gave purpose and continuity to his scatteredimpulses, and a mysterious glow of consecration to his task.
Once or twice, in the first days of his marriage, he had askedhimself with a slight shiver what would happen if Susy shouldbegin to bore him. The thing had happened to him with otherwomen as to whom his first emotions had not differed inintensity from those she inspired. The part he had played inhis previous love-affairs might indeed have been summed up inthe memorable line: "I am the hunter and the prey," for he hadinvariably ceased to be the first only to regard himself as thesecond. This experience had never ceased to cause him theliveliest pain, since his sympathy for his pursuer was only lesskeen than his commiseration for himself; but as he was always alittle sorrier for himself, he had always ended by distancingthe pursuer.
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