For Jewdwine had found himself a third time at the turning of the ways.  He knew where he was; but not where he was going.  It had happened with Jewdwine as it had with Isaac Rickman; as it happens to every man bent on serving two masters.  He had forbidden his right hand all knowledge of his left.  He lived in two separate worlds.  In one, lit by the high, pure light of the idea, he stood comparatively alone, cheered in his intellectual solitude by the enthusiasm of his disciples.  For in the minds of a few innocent young men Horace Jewdwine’s reputation remained immortal; and these made a point of visiting the Master in his house at Hampstead.  He allowed the souls of these innocent young men to appear before him in an undress; for them he still kept his lamp well trimmed, handing on the sacred imperishable flame.  Some suffered no painful disenchantment for their pilgrimage; and when the world that knew Jewdwine imparted to them its wisdom they smiled the mystic smile of the initiated.  But many had become shaken in their faith.  One of these, having achieved a little celebrity, without (as he discovered to his immense astonishment) any public assistance from the Master, had gone to Rickman and asked him diffidently for the truth about Jewdwine.  Rickman had assured him that the person in the study, the inspired and inspiring person with the superhuman insight, who knew your thoughts before you had time to round your sentence, the person who in that sacred incommunicable privacy had praised your work, he was the real Jewdwine.  “But,” he had added, “everybody can’t afford to be himself.”  And this had been Jewdwine’s own confession and defence.

But now he had gone down into Devonshire, as Rickman had once gone before him, to find himself.  He had returned to Lucia as to his own purer soul.  That night Jewdwine sat up face to face with himself and all his doubts; his problem being far more complicated than before.  Three years ago it might have been very simply stated.  Was he or was he not going to marry his cousin Lucia?  But now, while personal inclination urged him to marry her, prudence argued that he would do better to marry a certain cousin of Mr. Fulcher’s.  His own cousin had neither money nor position.  Mr. Fulcher’s cousin had both.  Once married to Miss Fulcher he could buy back Court House, if the Pallisers would give it up.  The Cabinet Minister’s cousin was in love with him, whereas he was well aware that his own cousin was not.

But then he had never greatly desired her to be so.

Jewdwine had neither respect nor longing for Miss Fulcher’s passionate love.  To his fragile temperament there was something infinitely more alluring in Lucia’s virginal apathy.  Her indifference (which he confused with her innocence) fascinated him; her reluctance was as a challenge to his languid blood.  He was equally fascinated by her indifference to the income and position that were his.  He admired that immaculate purity the more because he was not