n his way, that Sidney should not accept the responsibility?
Conscience from the first whispered against his doing so, and the
whisper was grown to so loud a voice that not an adverse argument could
get effective hearing. Temptations lurked for him and sprang out in
moments of his weakness, but as temptations they were at once
recognised. 'He had gone too far to retire; he would be guilty of sheer
treachery to Jane; he would break the old man's heart.' All which meant
merely that he loved the girl, and that it would be like death to part
from her. But why part? What had conscience got hold of, that it made
all this clamour? Oh, it was simple enough; Sidney not only had no
faith in the practicability of such a life's work as Michael visioned,
but he had the profoundest distrust of his own moral strength if he
should allow himself to be committed to lifelong renunciation. 'I am no
hero,' he said, 'no enthusiast. The time when my whole being could be
stirred by social questions has gone by. I am a man in love, and in
proportion as my love has strengthened, so has my old artist-self
revived in me, until now I can imagine no bliss so perfect as to marry
Jane Snowdon and go off to live with her amid fields and trees, where
no echo of the suffering world should ever reach us.' To confess this
was to make it terribly certain that sooner or later the burden of
conscientiousness would become intolerable. Not from Jane would support
come in that event; she, poor child I would fall into miserable
perplexity, in conflict between love and duty, and her life would be
rained.

Of course a man might have said, 'What matter how things arrange
themselves when Michael is past knowledge of them? I will marry the
woman I honestly desire, and together we will carry out this
humanitarian project so long as it be possible. When it ceases to be
so, well--.' But Sidney could not take that view. It shamed him beyond
endurance to think that he must ever avoid Jane's look, because he had
proved himself dishonest, and, what were worse, had tempted her to
become so.

The conflict between desire and scruple made every day a weariness.
Instead of looking forward eagerly to the evening in the week which he
spent with Michael and Jane, he dreaded its approach. Scarcely had he
met Jane's look since this trouble began; he knew that her voice when
she spoke to him expressed consciousness of something new in their
relations, and even whilst continuing to ac