In fine, it is Hippogriff.  And right loath am I to continue my partnership with a fellow who will not see things on the surface, and is, as a necessary consequence, blind to the fact that the public detest him.  I mean, this garrulous, super-subtle, so-called Philosopher, who first set me upon the building of ‘The Three Volumes,’ it is true, but whose stipulation that he should occupy so large a portion of them has made them rock top-heavy, to the forfeit of their stability.  He maintains that a story should not always flow, or, at least, not to a given measure.  When we are knapsack on back, he says, we come to eminences where a survey of our journey past and in advance is desireable, as is a distinct pause in any business, here and there.  He points proudly to the fact that our people in this comedy move themselves,—­are moved from their own impulsion,—­and that no arbitrary hand has posted them to bring about any event and heap the catastrophe.  In vain I tell him that he is meantime making tatters of the puppets’ golden robe illusion:  that he is sucking the blood of their warm humanity out of them.  He promises that when Emilia is in Italy he will retire altogether; for there is a field of action, of battles and conspiracies, nerve and muscle, where life fights for plain issues, and he can but sum results.  Let us, he entreats, be true to time and place.  In our fat England, the gardener Time is playing all sorts of delicate freaks in the lines and traceries of the flower of life, and shall we not note them?  If we are to understand our species, and mark the progress of civilization at all, we must.  Thus the Philosopher.  Our partner is our master, and I submit, hopefully looking for release with my Emilia, in the day when Italy reddens the sky with the banners of a land revived.

I hear Wilfrid singing out that he is aloft, burning to rush ahead, while his beast capers in one spot, abominably ludicrous.  This trick of Hippogriff is peculiar, viz., that when he loses all faith in himself, he sinks—­in other words, goes to excesses of absurd humility to regain it.  Passion has likewise its panting intervals, but does nothing so preposterous.  The wreath of black briony, spoken of by Tracy as the crown of Emilia’s forehead, had begun to glow with a furnace-colour in Wilfrid’s fancy.  It worked a Satanic distraction in him.  The girl sat before him swathed in a darkness, with the edges of the briony leaves shining deadly—­radiant above—­young Hecate!  The next instant he was bleeding with pity for her, aching with remorse, and again stung to intense jealousy of all who might behold her (amid a reserve of angry sensations at her present happiness).

Why had she not made allowance for his miserable situation that night in Devon?  Why did she not comprehend his difficulties in relation to his father’s affairs?  Why did she not know that he could not fail to love her for ever?

Interrogations such as these were so many switches of the whip in the flanks of Hippogriff.