tion with Buckland Warricombe, last October, he had spoken not
altogether insincerely. Let him once be a member of the Church
militant, and his heart would go with many a stroke against that
democratic movement which desired, among other things, the Church's
abolition. He had power of utterance. Roused to combat by the
proletarian challenge, he could make his voice ring in the ears of men,
even though he used a symbolism which he would not by choice have
adopted.

For it was natural that he should anticipate distinction. Whatever his
lot in life, he would not be able to rest among an inglorious
brotherhood. If he allied himself with the Church, the Church must
assign him leadership, whether titular or not was of small moment. In
days to come, let people, if they would, debate his history, canvass
his convictions. His scornful pride invited any degree of publicity,
when once his position was secure.

But in the meantime he was leaving aside the most powerful of all his
motives, and one which demanded closest scrutiny. Not ambition, in any
ordinary sense; not desire of material luxury; no incentive recognised
by unprincipled schemers first suggested his dishonour. This edifice of
subtle untruth had for its foundation a mere ideal of sexual love. For
the winning of some chosen woman, men have wrought vehemently, have
ruined themselves and others, have achieved triumphs noble or
degrading. But Godwin Peak had for years contemplated the possibility
of baseness at the impulse of a craving for love capable only of a
social (one might say, of a political) definition. The woman throned in
his imagination was no individual, but the type of an order. So
strangely had circumstances moulded him, that he could not brood on a
desire of spiritual affinities, could not, as is natural to most
cultivated men, inflame himself with the ardour of soul reaching to
soul; he was pre-occupied with the contemplation of qualities which
characterise a class. The sense of social distinctions was so burnt
into him, that he could not be affected by any pictured charm of mind
or person in a woman who had not the stamp of gentle birth and
breeding. If once he were admitted to the intimacy of such women, then,
indeed, the canons of selection would have weight with him; no man more
capable of disinterested choice. Till then, the ideal which possessed
him was merely such an assemblage of qualities as would excite the
democrat to disdain or fury.

In Si