 the proof how much better it is to behave truthfully! In this
last year I have changed so much that I find it difficult to understand the
strength of my former prejudices. What is it to me now that you speak scornfully
of attempts to reconcile things that can't be reconciled? I understand the new
thought, and how natural it is for you to accept it. If only I could have come
to know you well, your opinions would not have stood between us.«
    Peak made a slight gesture, and smiled incredulously.
    »You think so now.«
    »And I have such good reason for my thought,« rejoined Sidwell, earnestly,
»that when you said you loved me, my only regret in looking to the future was -
that you had resolved to be a clergyman.«
    He leaned back in the chair, and let a hand fall on his knee. The gesture
seemed to signify a weary relinquishment of concern in what they were
discussing.
    »How could I foresee that?« he uttered, in a corresponding tone.
    Sidwell was made uneasy by the course upon which she had entered. To what
did her words tend? If only to a demonstration that fate had used him as the
plaything of its irony - if, after all, she had nothing to say to him but »See
how your own folly has ruined you,« then she had better have kept silence. She
not only appeared to be offering him encouragement, but was in truth doing so.
She wished him to understand that his way of thinking was no obstacle to her
love, and with that purpose she was even guilty of a slight misrepresentation.
For it was only since the shock of this disaster that she had clearly recognised
the change in her own mind. True, the regret of which she spoke had for an
instant visited her, but it represented a mundane solicitude rather than an
intellectual scruple. It had occurred to her how much brighter would be their
prospect if Peak were but an active man of the world, with a career before him
distinctly suited to his powers.
    His contention was undeniably just. The influence to which she had from the
first submitted was the same that her father felt so strongly. Godwin interested
her as a self-reliant champion of the old faiths, and his personal
characteristics would never have awakened such sympathy in her but for that
initial recommendation. Natural prejudice would have prevented her from
perceiving the points of kindred between his temperament and her own. His low
origin, the ridiculous stories connected with his youth - why had she, in spite
of
