stage when compromise is abhorred; they accept, at first reluctantly,
but ere long with satisfaction, that code of polite intercourse which,
as Steele says, is 'an expedient to make fools and wise men equal'. It
was Marcella's ill-fate that she could neither learn tolerance nor
persuade herself to affect it. The emancipated woman has fewer
opportunities of relieving her mind than a man in corresponding
position; if her temper be aggressive she must renounce general
society, and, if not content to live alone, ally herself with some
group of declared militants. By correspondence, or otherwise, Marcella
might have brought herself into connection with women of a sympathetic
type, but this effort she had never made. And chiefly because of her
acquaintance with Godwin Peak. In him she concentrated her interests;
he was the man to whom her heart went forth with every kind of fervour.
So long as there remained a hope of moving him to reciprocal feeling
she did not care to go in search of female companions. Year after year
she sustained herself in solitude by this faint hope. She had lost
sight of the two or three schoolfellows who, though not so zealous as
herself, would have welcomed her as an interesting acquaintance; and
the only woman who assiduously sought her was Mrs. Morton, the wife of
one of Christian's friends, a good-natured but silly person bent on
making known that she followed the 'higher law'.

Godwin's disappearance sank her in profound melancholy. Through the
black weeks of January and February she scarcely left the house, and on
the plea of illness refused to see any one but her brother. Between
Christian and her there was no avowed confidence, but each knew the
other's secret; their mutual affection never spoke itself in words, yet
none the less it was indispensable to their lives. Deprived of his
sister's company, Christian must have yielded to the vice which had
already too strong a hold upon him, and have become a maudlin drunkard.
Left to herself, Marcella had but slender support against a grim
temptation already beckoning her in nights of sleeplessness. Of the
two, her nature was the more tragic. Circumstances aiding, Christian
might still forget his melancholy, abandon the whisky bottle, and pass
a lifetime of amiable uxoriousness, varied with scientific enthusiasm.
But for Marcella, frustrate in the desire with which every impulse of
her being had identified itself, what future could be imagined?

Wh