a supporter of the strenuous virtues, save when it has survived fruition and
been blessed by reason. In most men a fit of amorous mooning works its own cure;
energetic rebound is soon inevitable. But Christian was so constituted that a
decade of years could not exhause his capacity for sentimental languishment. He
made it a point of honour to seek no female companionship which could imperil
his faith. Unfortunately, this avoidance of the society which would soon have
made him a happy renegade, was but too easy. Marcella and he practically
encouraged each other in a life of isolation, though to both of them such an
existence was anything but congenial. Their difficulties were of the same nature
as those which had always beset Godwin Peak; they had no relatives with whom
they cared to associate, and none of the domestic friends who, in the progress
of time, establish and extend a sphere of genuine intimacy.
    Most people who are capable of independent thought rapidly outgrow the stage
when compromise is abhorred; they accept, at first reluctantly, but ere long
with satisfaction, that code of polite intercourse which, as Steele says, is »an
expedient to make fools and wise men equal.« It was Marcella's ill-fate that she
could neither learn tolerance nor persuade herself to affect it. The emancipated
woman has fewer opportunities of relieving her mind than a man in corresponding
position; if her temper be aggressive she must renounce general society, and, if
not content to live alone, ally herself with some group of declared militants.
By correspondence, or otherwise, Marcella might have brought herself into
connection with women of a sympathetic type, but this effort she had never made.
And chiefly because of her acquaintance with Godwin Peak. In him she
concentrated her interests; he was the man to whom her heart went forth with
every kind of fervour. So long as there remained a hope of moving him to
reciprocal feeling she did not care to go in search of female companions. Year
after year she sustained herself in solitude by this faint hope. She had lost
sight of the two or three school-fellows who, though not so zealous as herself,
would have welcomed her as an interesting acquaintance; and the only woman who
assiduously sought her was Mrs. Morton, the wife of one of Christian's friends,
a good-natured but silly person bent on making known that she followed the
higher law.
    Godwin's disappearance sank her in profound melancholy. Through the black
weeks of January and February she scarcely left the house, and on the plea of
illness refused to see any one but