
have adopted.
    For it was natural that he should anticipate distinction. Whatever his lot
in life, he would not be able to rest among an inglorious brotherhood. If he
allied himself with the Church, the Church must assign him leadership, whether
titular or not was of small moment. In days to come, let people, if they would,
debate his history, canvass his convictions. His scornful pride invited any
degree of publicity, when once his position was secure.
    But in the meantime he was leaving aside the most powerful of all his
motives, and one which demanded closest scrutiny. Not ambition, in any ordinary
sense; not desire of material luxury; no incentive recognised by unprincipled
schemers first suggested his dishonour. This edifice of subtle untruth had for
its foundation a mere ideal of sexual love. For the winning of some chosen
woman, men have wrought vehemently, have ruined themselves and others, have
achieved triumphs noble or degrading. But Godwin Peak had for years contemplated
the possibility of baseness at the impulse of a craving for love capable only of
a social (one might say, of a political) definition. The woman throned in his
imagination was no individual, but the type of an order. So strangely had
circumstances moulded him, that he could not brood on a desire of spiritual
affinities, could not, as is natural to most cultivated men, inflame himself
with the ardour of soul reaching to soul; he was preoccupied with the
contemplation of qualities which characterise a class. The sense of social
distinctions was so burnt into him, that he could not be affected by any
pictured charm of mind or person in a woman who had not the stamp of gentle
birth and breeding. If once he were admitted to the intimacy of such women,
then, indeed, the canons of selection would have weight with him; no man more
capable of disinterested choice. Till then, the ideal which possessed him was
merely such an assemblage of qualities as would excite the democrat to disdain
or fury.
    In Sidwell Warricombe this ideal found an embodiment; but Godwin did not
thereupon come to the conclusion that Sidwell was the wife he desired. Her
influence had the effect of deciding his career, but he neither imagined himself
in love with her, nor tried to believe that he might win her love if he set
himself to the endeavour. For the first time he was admitted to familiar
intercourse with a woman whom he could make the object of his worship. He
thought much of her; day and night her figure stood before him; and this had
continued now for half a year. Still he neither
