Alan Merrick, however, was over thirty and still unmarried.  More than that, he was heart-free,—­a very evil record.  And, like most other unmarried men of thirty, he was a trifle fastidious.  He was “looking about him.”  That means to say, he was waiting to find some woman who suited him.  No man does so at twenty.  He sees and loves.  But Alan Merrick, having let slip the golden moment when nature prompts every growing youth to fling himself with pure devotion at the feet of the first good angel who happens to cross his path and attract his worship, had now outlived the early flush of pure passion, and was thinking only of “comfortably settling himself.”  In one word, when a man is young, he asks himself with a thrill what he can do to make happy this sweet soul he loves; when he has let that critical moment flow by him unseized, he asks only, in cold blood, what woman will most agreeably make life run smooth for him.  The first stage is pure love; the second, pure selfishness.

Still, Alan Merrick was now “getting on in his profession,” and, as people said, it was high time he should be settled.  They said it as they might have said it was high time he should take a business partner.  From that lowest depth of emotional disgrace Herminia Barton was to preserve him.  It was her task in life, though she knew it not, to save Alan Merrick’s soul.  And nobly she saved it.

Alan, “looking about him,” with some fine qualities of nature underlying in the background that mean social philosophy of the class from which he sprang, fell frankly in love almost at first sight with Herminia.  He admired and respected her.  More than that, he understood her.  She had power in her purity to raise his nature for a time to something approaching her own high level.  True woman has the real Midas gift:  all that she touches turns to purest gold.  Seeing Herminia much and talking with her, Alan could not fail to be impressed with the idea that here was a soul which could do a great deal more for him than “make him comfortable,”—­ which could raise him to moral heights he had hardly yet dreamt of,—­which could wake in him the best of which he was capable.  And watching her thus, he soon fell in love with her, as few men of thirty are able to fall in love for the first time,—­as the young man falls in love, with the unselfish energy of an unspoilt nature.  He asked no longer whether Herminia was the sort of girl who could make him comfortable; he asked only, with that delicious tremor of self-distrust which belongs to naive youth, whether he dare offer himself to one so pure and good and beautiful.  And his hesitation was justified; for our sordid England has not brought forth many such serene and single-minded souls as Herminia Barton.