He knew now that he loved her -- Isabel Temple , dead for eighty years .<br>This was love -- this searing , torturing , intolerably sweet thing -- this possession of body and soul and spirit .<br>The poets had sung but weakly of it .<br>He could tell them better if he could find words .<br>Could other men have loved at all -- could any man love those blowzy , common girls of earth ?
He loved a woman who died less than a century ago