 »Why Peak is all but a
woman-hater!«
    The journalist uttered croaking laughter.
    »Have I totally misunderstood him?« asked Christian, confused and abashed.
    »I think it not impossible.«
    »You amaze me! - But no, no; you are wrong, Earwaker. Wrong in your
suggestion, I mean. Peak could never sink to that. He is too uncompromising« -
    »Well, it will be explained some day, I suppose.«
    And with a shrug of impatience, the journalist turned to another subject.
He, too, regretted his old friend's disappearance, and in a measure resented it.
Godwin Peak was not a man to slip out of one's life and leave no appreciable
vacancy. Neither of these men admired him, in the true sense of the word, yet
had his voice sounded at the door both would have sprung up with eager welcome.
He was a force - and how many such beings does one encounter in a lifetime?
 

                                       II

In different ways, Christian and Marcella Moxey had both been lonely since their
childhood. As a schoolgirl, Marcella seemed to her companions conceited and
repellent; only as the result of reflection in after years did Sylvia Moorhouse
express so favourable an opinion of her. In all things she affected singularity;
especially it was her delight to utter democratic and revolutionary sentiments
among hearers who, belonging to a rigidly conservative order, held such opinions
impious. Arrived at womanhood, she affected scorn of the beliefs and habits
cherished by her own sex, and shrank from association with the other. Godwin
Peak was the first man with whom she conversed in the tone of friendship, and it
took a year or more before that point was reached. As her intimacy with him
established itself, she was observed to undergo changes which seemed very
significant in the eyes of her few acquaintances. Disregard of costume had been
one of her characteristics, but now she moved gradually towards the opposite
extreme, till her dresses were occasionally more noticeable for richness than
for good taste.
    Christian, for kindred reasons, was equally debarred from the pleasures and
profits of society. At school, his teachers considered him clever, his fellows
for the most part looked down upon him as a sentimental weakling. The death of
his parents, when he was still a lad, left him to the indifferent care of a
guardian nothing akin to him. He began life in an uncongenial position, and had
not courage to oppose the drift of circumstances. The romantic attachment which
absorbed his best years naturally had a debilitating effect, for love was never
yet
