George Eliot: Middlemarch

BOOK V. THE DEAD HAND. 47. CHAPTER XLVII.

    Was never true love loved in vain,
    For truest love is highest gain.
    No art can make it:  it must spring
    Where elements are fostering.
        So in heaven's spot and hour
        Springs the little native flower,
        Downward root and upward eye,
        Shapen by the earth and sky.

It happened to be on a Saturday evening that Will Ladislaw had that little discussion with Lydgate. Its effect when he went to his own rooms was to make him sit up half the night, thinking over again, under a new irritation, all that he had before thought of his having settled in Middlemarch and harnessed himself with Mr. Brooke. Hesitations before he had taken the step had since turned into susceptibility to every hint that he would have been wiser not to take it; and hence came his heat towards Lydgate--a heat which still kept him restless. Was he not making a fool of himself?-- and at a time when he was more than ever conscious of being something better than a fool? And for what end?