sport was too poignant;
in the end it drove him to a fierce outbreak of despairing wrath. How
could he dream that such bliss would be the reward of despicable
artifice, of calculated dishonour? Born a rebel, how could his be the
fate of those happy men who are at one with the order of things? The
prophecy of a heart wrung with anguish foretold too surely that for him
was no rapturous love, no joy of noble wedlock. Solitude, now and for
ever, or perchance some base alliance of the flesh, which would involve
his later days in sordid misery.

In moods of discouragement he thought with envy of his old self, his
life in London lodgings, his freedom in obscurity. It belongs to the
pathos of human nature that only in looking back can one appreciate the
true value of those long tracts of monotonous ease which, when we are
living through them, seem of no account save in relation to past or
future; only at a distance do we perceive that the exemption from
painful shock was in itself a happiness, to be rated highly in
comparison with most of those disturbances known as moments of joy. A
wise man would have entertained no wish but that he might grow old in
that same succession of days and weeks and years. Without anxiety
concerning his material needs (certainly the most substantial of
earthly blessings), his leisure not inadequate to the gratification of
a moderate studiousness, with friends who offered him an ever-ready
welcome,--was it not much? If he were condemned to bachelorhood, his
philosophy was surely capable of teaching him that the sorrows and
anxieties he thus escaped made more than an offset against the
satisfactions he must forego. Reason had no part in the fantastic
change to which his life had submitted, nor was he ever supported by a
hope which would bear his cooler investigation.

And yet hope had her periods of control, for there are times when the
mind wearies of rationality, and, as it were in self-defense, in
obedience to the instinct of progressive life, craves a specious
comfort. It seemed undeniable that Mr. Warricombe regarded him with
growth of interest, invited his conversation more unreservedly. He
began to understand Martin's position with regard to religion and
science, and thus could utter himself more securely. At length he
ventured to discourse with some amplitude on his own convictions--the
views, that is to say, which he thought fit to adopt in his character
of a liberal Christian. It was on an