by the attraction of
mere mental similarity. A man says to a man, "Do you really believe it?"
and, if the answer is "yes," the two become friends; but if it is a woman
who responds to him, something follows which is sweeter than friendship,
whether she be bound or free. It cannot be helped; there is no reason
why we should try to help it, provided only we do no harm to others, and
indeed these delicate threads are the very fairest in the tissue of life.
With Mr. Cardew it was a little different. Undoubtedly he was drawn to
Catharine because her thoughts were his thoughts. St. Paul and Milton in
him saluted St. Paul and Milton in her. But he did not know where to
stop, nor could he look round and realise whither he was being led. Any
other person in six weeks would have noticed the milestones on the road,
and would have determined that it was time to turn, but he gaily walked
forward with his head in the clouds. If anybody at that particular
moment when he left the bridge could have made him comprehend that he was
making love to a girl; that what he was doing was an ordinary,
commonplace criminal act, or one which would justifiably be interpreted
as such, he not only would have been staggered and confounded, but would
instantly have drawn back. As it was, he was neither staggered nor
confounded, and went home to his wife with but one image in his brain,
that of Catharine Furze.

Catharine was one of those creatures whose life is not uniform from
sixteen to sixty, a simple progressive accumulation of experiences, the
addition of a ring of wood each year. There had come a time to her when
she had suddenly opened. The sun shone with new light, a new lustre lay
on river and meadow, the stars became something more than mere luminous
points in the sky, she asked herself strange questions, and she loved
more than ever her long wanderings at Chapel Farm. This phenomenon of a
new birth is more often seen at some epochs than at others. When a
nation is stirred by any religious movement it is common, but it is also
common in a different shape during certain periods of spiritual activity,
such as the latter part of the eighteenth century and the first half of
the nineteenth in England and Germany. Had Catharine been born two
hundred years earlier, life would have been easy. All that was in her
would have found expression in the faith of her ancestors, large enough
for any intellect or any heart at that time. She would