light peculiarly attractive to Mr. Warricombe.
He was now playing the conscious hypocrite; not a pleasant thing to
face and accept, but the fault was not his--fate had brought it about.
At all events, he aimed at no vulgar profit; his one desire was for
human fellowship; he sought nothing but that solace which every code of
morals has deemed legitimate. Let the society which compelled to such
an expedient bear the burden of its shame.

That must indeed have been a circle of great intellects amid which
Godwin Peak felt himself subordinate. He had never known that
impression, and in the Warricombe family was no one whom he could
regard even as his equal. Buckland, doubtless, had some knowledge of
the world, and could boast of a free mind; but he lacked subtlety: a
psychological problem would easily puzzle him. Mr. Warricombe's
attainments were respectable, but what could be said of a man who had
devoted his life to geology, and still (in the year 1884) remained an
orthodox member of the Church of England? Godwin, as he sat in the
drawing-room and enjoyed its atmosphere of refinement, sincerely held
himself of far more account as an intellectual being than all the
persons about him.

But if his brain must dwell in solitude his heart might compass worthy
alliances--the thing most needful to humanity. One may find the
associates of his intellect in libraries--the friend of one's emotions
must walk in flesh and blood. Earwaker, Moxey--these were in many
respects admirable fellows, and he had no little love for them, but the
world they represented was womanless, and so of flagrant imperfection.
Of Marcella Moxey he could not think emotionally; indeed she emphasised
by her personality the lack which caused his suffering. Sidwell
Warricombe suggested, more completely than any woman he had yet
observed, that companionship without which life must to the end taste
bitter. His interest in her was not strictly personal; she moved and
spoke before him as a typical woman, not as the daughter of Martin
Warricombe and the sister of Buckland. Here at last opened to his view
that sphere of female society which he had known as remotely existing,
the desperate aim of ambition.

Conventional women--but was not the phrase tautological? In the few
females who have liberated their souls, was not much of the woman
inevitably sacrificed, and would it not be so for long years to come?
On the other hand, such a one as Sidwell might be held a perf