But if his brain must dwell in solitude his heart might compass worthy alliances—­the thing most needful to humanity.  One may find the associates of his intellect in libraries—­the friend of one’s emotions must walk in flesh and blood.  Earwaker, Moxey—­these were in many respects admirable fellows, and he had no little love for them, but the world they represented was womanless, and so of flagrant imperfection.  Of Marcella Moxey he could not think emotionally; indeed she emphasised by her personality the lack which caused his suffering.  Sidwell Warricombe suggested, more completely than any woman he had yet observed, that companionship without which life must to the end taste bitter.  His interest in her was not strictly personal; she moved and spoke before him as a typical woman, not as the daughter of Martin Warricombe and the sister of Buckland.  Here at last opened to his view that sphere of female society which he had known as remotely existing, the desperate aim of ambition.

Conventional women—­but was not the phrase tautological?  In the few females who have liberated their souls, was not much of the woman inevitably sacrificed, and would it not be so for long years to come?  On the other hand, such a one as Sidwell might be held a perfect creature, perfect in relation to a certain stage of human development.  Look at her, as she sat conversing with Moorhouse, soft candle-light upon her face; compare her on the one hand with an average emancipated girl, on the other with a daughter of the people.  How unsatisfying was the former; the latter, how repulsive!  Here one had the exquisite mean, the lady as England has perfected her towards the close of this nineteenth century.  A being of marvellous delicacy, of purest instincts, of unsurpassable sweetness.  Who could not detail her limitations, obvious and, in certain moods, irritating enough?  These were nothing to the point, unless one would roam the world a hungry idealist; and Godwin was weary of the famined pilgrimage.

The murmur of amiable voices softened him to the reception of all that was good in his present surroundings, and justified in the light of sentiment his own dishonour.  This English home, was it not surely the best result of civilisation in an age devoted to material progress?  Here was peace, here was scope for the kindliest emotions.  Upon him—­the born rebel, the scorner of average mankind, the consummate egoist—­this atmosphere exercised an influence more tranquillising, more beneficent, than even the mood of disinterested study.  In the world to which sincerity would condemn him, only the worst elements of his character found nourishment and range; here he was humanised, made receptive of all gentle sympathies.  Heroism might point him to an unending struggle with adverse conditions, but how was heroism possible without faith?  Absolute faith he had none; he was essentially a negativist, guided by the mere relations of phenomena.  Nothing