 which springs
from a life in which the mental and bodily constitution have made pain
predominate. He had not his full share in the common good of men: he could not
even pass muster with the insignificant, but must be singled out for pity, and
excepted from what was a matter of course with others. Even to Maggie he was an
exception: it was clear that the thought of his being her lover had never
entered her mind.
    Do not think too hardly of Philip. Ugly and deformed people have great need
of unusual virtues, because they are likely to be extremely uncomfortable
without them: but the theory that unusual virtues spring by a direct consequence
out of personal disadvantages, as animals get thicker wool in severe climates,
is perhaps a little overstrained. The temptations of beauty are much dwelt upon,
but I fancy they only bear the same relation to those of ugliness, as the
temptation to excess at a feast, where the delights are varied for eye and ear
as well as palate, bears to the temptations that assail the desperation of
hunger. Does not the Hunger Tower stand as the type of the utmost trial to what
is human in us?
    Philip had never been soothed by that mother's love which flows out to us in
the greater abundance because our need is greater, which clings to us the more
tenderly because we are the less likely to be winners in the game of life; and
the sense of his father's affection and indulgence towards him was marred by the
keener perception of his father's faults. Kept aloof from all practical life as
Philip had been, and by nature half feminine in sensitiveness, he had some of
the woman's intolerant repulsion towards worldliness and the deliberate pursuit
of sensual enjoyment; and this one strong natural tie in his life - his relation
as a son - was like an aching limb to him. Perhaps there is inevitably something
morbid in a human being who is in any way unfavourably excepted from ordinary
conditions, until the good force has had time to triumph; and it has rarely had
time for that at two-and-twenty. That force was present in Philip in much
strength, but the sun himself looks feeble through the morning mists.
 

                                   Chapter IV

                               Another Love-Scene

Early in the following April, nearly a year after that dubious parting you have
just witnessed, you may, if you like, again see Maggie entering the Red Deeps
through the group of Scotch firs. But it is early afternoon and not evening, and
the edge of sharpness in the spring air makes her draw her large shawl close
about her and
