Wilfrid’s hand was rising.  At this juncture his brother officer slipped out some languid words in his ear, indicative of his astonishment that he should be championing a termagant, and horror at the idea of such a thing being publicly imagined, tamed Wilfrid quickly.  He recovered himself with his usual cleverness.  Seeing the signs of hostility vanish, Mr. Pericles said, “You are on a search for your father?  You have found him?  Hom!  I should say a maladie of nerfs will come to him.  A pin fall—­he start!  A storm at night—­he is out dancing among his ships of venture!  Not a bid of corage!—­which is bad.  If you shall find Mr. Pole for to-morrow on ze lawn, vary glad.”

With a smile compounded of sniffing dog and Parisian obsequiousness, Mr. Pericles passed, thinking “He has not got her:”  for such was his deduction if he saw that a man could flush for a woman’s name.

Wilfrid stood like a machine with a thousand wheels in revolt.  Sensations pricked at ideas, and immediately left them to account for their existence as they best could.  The ideas committed suicide without a second’s consideration.  He felt the great gurgling sea in which they were drowned heave and throb.  Then came a fresh set, that poised better on the slack-rope of his understanding.  By degrees, a buried dread in his brain threw off its shroud.  The thought that there was something wrong with his father stood clearly over him, to be swallowed at once in the less tangible belief that a harm had come to Emilia—­not was coming, but had come.  Passion thinks wilfully when it thinks at all.  That night he lay in a deep anguish, revolving the means by which he might help and protect her.  There seemed no way open, save by making her his own; and did he belong to himself?.  What bound him to Lady Charlotte?  She was not lovely or loving.  He had not even kissed her hand; yet she held him in a chain.

The two men composing most of us at the outset of actual life began their deadly wrestle within him, both having become awakened.  If they wait for circumstance, that steady fire will fuse them into one, who is commonly a person of some strength; but throttling is the custom between them, and we are used to see men of murdered halves.  These men have what they fought for:  they are unaware of any guilt that may be charged against them, though they know that they do not embrace Life; and so it is that we have vague discontent too universal.  Change, O Lawgiver! the length of our minority, and let it not end till this battle is thoroughly fought out in approving daylight.  The period of our duality should be one as irresponsible in your eyes as that of our infancy.  Is he we call a young man an individual—­who is a pair of alternately kicking scales?  Is he educated, when he dreams not that he is divided?  He has drunk Latin like a vital air, and can quote what he remembers of Homer; but how has he been fortified for this tremendous conflict of opening manhood, which is to our life here what is the landing of a soul to the life to come?