mething
wrong with his father stood clearly over him, to be swallowed at once in
the less tangible belief that a harm had come to Emilia--not was coming,
but had come. Passion thinks wilfully when it thinks at all. That night
he lay in a deep anguish, revolving the means by which he might help and
protect her. There seemed no way open, save by making her his own; and
did he belong to himself? What bound him to Lady Charlotte? She was not
lovely or loving. He had not even kissed her hand; yet she held him in a
chain.

The two men composing most of us at the outset of actual life began
their deadly wrestle within him, both having become awakened. If they
wait for circumstance, that steady fire will fuse them into one, who is
commonly a person of some strength; but throttling is the custom between
them, and we are used to see men of murdered halves. These men have
what they fought for: they are unaware of any guilt that may be charged
against them, though they know that they do not embrace Life; and so it
is that we have vague discontent too universal. Change, O Lawgiver!
the length of our minority, and let it not end till this battle is
thoroughly fought out in approving daylight. The period of our duality
should be one as irresponsible in your eyes as that of our infancy.
Is he we call a young man an individual--who is a pair of alternately
kicking scales? Is he educated, when he dreams not that he is divided?
He has drunk Latin like a vital air, and can quote what he remembers
of Homer; but how has he been fortified for this tremendous conflict of
opening manhood, which is to our life here what is the landing of a soul
to the life to come?

Meantime, it is a bad business when the double-man goes about kneeling
at the feet of more than one lady. Society (to give that institution its
due) permits him to seek partial invulnerability by dipping himself in a
dirty Styx, which corrects, as we hear said, the adolescent tendency to
folly. Wilfrid's sentiment had served him (well or ill as it may be),
by keeping him from a headlong plunge in the protecting river; and his
folly was unchastened. He did not even contemplate an escape from the
net at Emilia's expense. The idea came. The idea will come to a young
man in such a difficulty. "My mistress! My glorious stolen fruit! My
dark angel of love!" He deserves a little credit for seeing that Emilia
never could be his mistress, in the debased sense of the term. Union
with her mea