Nay, more; as Herminia herself had said to him, it was her better, her inner self he was in love with, not the mere statuesque face, the full and faultless figure.  He saw how pure, how pellucid, how noble the woman was; treading her own ideal world of high seraphic harmonies.  He was in love with her stainless soul; he could not have loved her so well, could not have admired her so profoundly, had she been other than she was, had she shared the common prejudices and preconceptions of women.  It was just because she was Herminia that he felt so irresistibly attracted towards her.  She drew him like a magnet.  What he loved and admired was not so much the fair, frank face itself, as the lofty Cornelia-like spirit behind it.

And yet,—­he hesitated.

Could he accept the sacrifice this white soul wished to make for him?  Could he aid and abet her in raising up for herself so much undeserved obloquy?  Could he help her to become Anathema maranatha among her sister women?  Even if she felt brave enough to try the experiment herself for humanity’s sake, was it not his duty as a man to protect her from her own sublime and generous impulses?  Is it not for that in part that nature makes us virile?  We must shield the weaker vessel.  He was flattered not a little that this leader among women should have picked him out for herself among the ranks of men as her predestined companion in her chosen task of emancipating her sex.  And he was thoroughly sympathetic (as every good man must needs be) with her aims and her method.  Yet, still he hesitated.  Never before could he have conceived such a problem of the soul, such a moral dilemma possible.  It rent heart and brain at once asunder.  Instinctively he felt to himself he would be doing wrong should he try in any way to check these splendid and unselfish impulses which led Herminia to offer herself willingly up as a living sacrifice on behalf of her enslaved sisters everywhere.  Yet the innate feeling of the man, that ’tis his place to protect and guard the woman, even from her own higher and purer self, intervened to distract him.  He couldn’t bear to feel he might be instrumental in bringing upon his pure Herminia the tortures that must be in store for her; he couldn’t bear to think his name might be coupled with hers in shameful ways, too base for any man to contemplate.

And then, intermixed with these higher motives, came others that he hardly liked to confess to himself where Herminia was concerned, but which nevertheless would obtrude themselves, will he, nill he, upon him.  What would other people say about such an innocent union as Herminia contemplated?  Not indeed, “What effect would it have upon his position and prospects?” Alan Merrick’s place as a barrister was fairly well assured, and the Bar is luckily one of the few professions in lie-loving England where a man need not grovel at the mercy of the moral judgment of the meanest and grossest among his fellow-creatures,