. The Hewetts became his closest friends; in their brief
prosperity he rejoiced with them, in their hardships he gave them all
the assistance to which John's pride would consent; his name was never
spoken among them but with warmth and gratitude. And of course the day
came to which Hewett had looked forward--the day when Sidney could no
longer take Clara upon his knee and stroke her brown hair and joke with
her about her fits of good and ill humour. Sidney knew well enough what
was in his friend's mind, and, though with no sense of constraint, he
felt that this handsome, keen-eyed, capricious girl was destined to be
his wife. He liked Clara; she always attracted him and interested him;
but her faults were too obvious to escape any eye, and the older she
grew, the more was he impressed and troubled by them. The thought of
Clara became a preoccupation, and with the love which at length he
recognised there blended a sense of fate fulfilling itself. His
enthusiasms, his purposes, never defined as education would have
defined them, were dissipated into utter vagueness. He lost his guiding
interests, and found himself returning to those of boyhood. The country
once more attracted him; he took out his old sketch-books, bought a new
one, revived the regret that he could not be a painter of landscape. A
visit to one or two picture-galleries, and then again profound
discouragement, recognition of the fact that he was a mechanic and
never could be anything else.

It was the end of his illusions. For him not even passionate love was
to preserve the power of idealising its object. He loved Clara with all
the desire of his being, but could no longer deceive himself in judging
her character. The same sad clearness of vision affected his judgment
of the world about him, of the activities in which he had once been
zealous, of the conditions which enveloped his life and the lives of
those dear to him. The spirit of revolt often enough stirred within
him, but no longer found utterance in the speech which brings relief;
he did his best to dispel the mood, mocking at it as folly. Consciously
he set himself the task of becoming a practical man, of learning to
make the best of life as he found it, of shunning as the fatal error
that habit of mind which kept John Hewett on the rack. Who was he that
he should look for pleasant things in his course through the world? 'We
are the lower orders; we are the working classes,' he said bitterly to
his