And, even when understanding of her seemed nearest to him, she suddenly receded from his grasp. A change of voice, a change of expression, a movement of her body--what was it? He did not know. He only knew that something he had said had separated them: she could become, in a moment, distant and unattainable, another woman altogether, coldly antagonistic.
Yet, by the old symptoms, he knew that he loved her. She persisted in his thoughts with an alarming result. He found himself pausing, pen in hand, at his desk in the reporters' room, thinking, "Would Elizabeth be pleased with this?..." And an impulse that needed all his strength to combat seized him to abandon the set form into which _The Day_ had cast his thoughts, to criticize and to express his own individual impression, whether they accorded or not with the views held by _The Day_. This was altogether new and disturbing. He was a mouthpiece whose mere duty was to record the words of others by interviews, or a painter to present pictures and not opinions. Conscience and convictions were luxuries that belonged to the critics of art, and the leader-writers.
There came to him days of unqualified unhappiness, when he was possessed by doubts. For the first time he mistrusted the value of his work: he began to see that the fundamental truths of life were outside his scope. Cities might be festering with immorality and slums; vice might parade openly, but these things could never be touched on in a daily newspaper. Nobody was to blame, least of all those who controlled the newspaper, for it is not the business of a daily to deal with the morals of existence.... It is not easy to analyse his feelings ... but, as a result of all this vague tormenting and apprehension, the old thrill at the power and wonder of the office which throbbed with daily activities forsook him, leaving in its place nothing but the desolating knowledge of the littleness and futility of it all.
The phase passed: the variety of the work enthralled him again. He travelled to distant towns and remote villages, and whenever he was in the grip of his work, all thoughts of Elizabeth Carr departed from him. He obtained extraordinary glimpses into the lives of other people; he acquired a knowledge into the working of things that was denied to those who only gleaned their knowledge second-hand from the things that he and others wrote. He saw things all day long: the plottings, the achievements and the failures of mankind.