 ripen him before due time; his nature was
not of the sterile order common in his world, and through passion, through
conflict, through endurance, it had to develop such maturity as fate should
permit. Saved from self-indulgence, he naturally turned into the way of
political enthusiasm; thither did his temper point him. With some help - mostly
negative - from Clerkenwell Green, he reached the stage of confident and
aspiring Radicalism, believing in the perfectibility of man, in human
brotherhood, in - anything you like that is the outcome of a noble heart
sheltered by ignorance. It had its turn, and passed.
    To give place to nothing very satisfactory. It was not a mere coincidence
that Sidney was going through a period of mental and moral confusion just in
those years which brought Clara Hewett from childhood to the state of woman.
Among the acquaintances of Sidney's boyhood there was not one but had a chosen
female companion from the age of fifteen or earlier; he himself had been no
exception to the rule in his class, but at the time of meeting with Hewett he
was companionless, and remained so. The Hewetts became his closest friends; in
their brief prosperity he rejoiced with them, in their hardships he gave them
all the assistance to which John's pride would consent; his name was never
spoken among them but with warmth and gratitude. And of course the day came to
which Hewett had looked forward - the day when Sidney could no longer take Clara
upon his knee and stroke her brown hair and joke with her about her fits of good
and ill humour. Sidney knew well enough what was in his friend's mind, and,
though with no sense of constraint, he felt that this handsome, keen-eyed,
capricious girl was destined to be his wife. He liked Clara; she always
attracted him and interested him; but her faults were too obvious to escape any
eye, and the older she grew, the more was he impressed and troubled by them. The
thought of Clara became a preoccupation, and with the love which at length he
recognised there blended a sense of fate fulfilling itself. His enthusiasms, his
purposes, never defined as education would have defined them, were dissipated
into utter vagueness. He lost his guiding interests, and found himself returning
to those of boyhood. The country once more attracted him; he took out his old
sketch-books, bought a new one, revived the regret that he could not be a
painter of landscape. A visit to one or two picture-galleries, and then again
profound discouragement, recognition
