main purpose, to convince himself that his real duty lay, not in
renouncing the Westmore money and its obligations, but in carrying out
his projected task as if nothing had occurred to affect his personal
relation to it. The mere fact that such a renunciation would have been a
deliberate moral suicide, a severing once for all of every artery of
action, made it take on, at first, the semblance of an obligation, a
sort of higher duty to the abstract conception of what he owed himself.
But Justine had not erred in her forecast. Once she had passed out of
his life, it was easier for him to return to a dispassionate view of his
situation, to see, and boldly confess to himself that he saw, the still
higher duty of sticking to his task, instead of sacrificing it to any
ideal of personal disinterestedness. It was this gradual process of
adjustment that saved him from the desolating scepticism which falls on
the active man when the sources of his activity are tainted. Having
accepted his fate, having consented to see in himself merely the
necessary agent of a good to be done, he could escape from
self-questioning only by shutting himself up in the practical exigencies
of his work, closing his eyes and his thoughts to everything which had
formerly related it to a wider world, had given meaning and beauty to
life as a whole.

The return from Europe, and the taking up of the daily routine at
Hanaford, were the most difficult phases in this process of moral
adaptation.

Justine's departure had at first brought relief. He had been too sincere
with himself to oppose her wish to leave Hanaford for a time, since he
believed that, for her as well as for himself, a temporary separation
would be less painful than a continuance of their actual relation. But
as the weeks passed into months he found he was no nearer to a clear
view of his own case: the future was still dark and enigmatic. Justine's
desire to leave him had revived his unformulated distrust of her. What
could it mean but that there were thoughts within her which could not be
at rest in his presence? He had given her every proof of his wish to
forget the past, and Mr. Langhope had behaved with unequalled
magnanimity. Yet Justine's unhappiness was evident: she could not
conceal her longing to escape from the conditions her act had created.
Was it because, in reality, she was conscious of other motives than the
one she acknowledged? She had insisted, almost unfeelingly as it mig