ked her. She was remarkably honest, and I have
sometimes thought that in morals, on the whole, she stood far above
most women. She hated falsehood--hated it with all her heart, and a
story of injustice maddened her. When I think of Marcella it helps me
to picture the Russian girls who propagate Nihilism.'

'You have lost sight of her?'

'She went abroad, I think. I should like to have known her fate. I
rather think there will have to be many like her before women are
civilised.'

'How I should like to ask her,' said Sidwell, 'on what she supported
her morality?'

'Put the problem to Mr. Peak,' suggested the other, gaily. 'I fancy he
wouldn't find it insoluble.'

Mrs. Warricombe and Mrs. Moorhouse appeared in the distance, walking
hither under parasols. The girls rose to meet them, and were presently
engaged in less interesting colloquy.

CHAPTER IV

This summer Peak became a semi-graduate of London University. To avoid
the risk of a casual meeting with acquaintances, he did not go to
London, but sat for his examination at the nearest provincial centre.
The revival of boyish tremors at the successive stages of this business
was anything but agreeable; it reminded him, with humiliating force,
how far he had strayed from the path indicated to his self-respecting
manhood. Defeat would have strengthened in overwhelming revolt all the
impulses which from time to time urged him to abandon his servile
course. But there was no chance of his failing to satisfy the
examiners. With 'Honours' he had now nothing to do; enough for his
purpose that in another year's time he would write himself Bachelor of
Arts, and thus simplify the clerical preliminaries. In what quarter he
was to look for a curacy remained uncertain. Meanwhile his enterprise
seemed to prosper, and success emboldened his hopes.

Hopes which were no longer vague, but had defined themselves in a way
which circumstances made inevitable. Though he had consistently guarded
himself against the obvious suggestions arising out of his intercourse
with the Warricombe family, though he still emphasised every
discouraging fact, and strove to regard it as axiomatic that nothing
could be more perilous to his future than a hint of presumption or
self-interest in word or deed beneath that friendly roof, it was coming
to pass that he thought of Sidwell not only as the type of woman
pursued by his imagination, but as herself the object of his converging
desires. Compar