In Sidwell Warricombe this ideal found an embodiment; but Godwin did not thereupon come to the conclusion that Sidwell was the wife he desired.  Her influence had the effect of deciding his career, but he neither imagined himself in love with her, nor tried to believe that he might win her love if he set himself to the endeavour.  For the first time he was admitted to familiar intercourse with a woman whom he could make the object of his worship.  He thought much of her; day and night her figure stood before him; and this had continued now for half a year.  Still he neither was, nor dreamt himself, in love with her.  Before long his acquaintance would include many of her like, and at any moment Sidwell might pale in the splendour of another’s loveliness.

But what reasoning could defend the winning of a wife by false pretences?  This, his final aim, could hardly be achieved without grave wrong to the person whose welfare must in the nature of things be a prime motive with him.  The deception he had practised must sooner or later be discovered; lifelong hypocrisy was incompatible with perfect marriage; some day he must either involve his wife in a system of dishonour, or with her consent relinquish the false career, and find his happiness in the obscurity to which he would then be relegated.  Admit the wrong.  Grant that some woman whom he loved supremely must, on his account, pass through a harsh trial—­ would it not be in his power to compensate her amply?  The wife whom he imagined (his idealism in this matter was of a crudity which made the strangest contrast with his habits of thought on every other subject) would be ruled by her emotions, and that part of her nature would be wholly under his governance.  Religious fanaticism could not exist in her, for in that case she would never have attracted him.  Little by little she would learn to think as he did, and her devotedness must lead her to pardon his deliberate insincerities.  Godwin had absolute faith in his power of dominating the woman whom he should inspire with tenderness.  This was a feature of his egoism, the explanation of those manifold inconsistencies inseparable from his tortuous design.  He regarded his love as something so rare, so vehement, so exalting, that its bestowal must seem an abundant recompense for any pain of which he was the cause.

Thus, with perfect sincerity of argument, did Godwin Peak face the undertaking to which he was committed.  Incidents might perturb him, but his position was no longer a cause of uneasiness—­save, indeed, at those moments when he feared lest any of his old acquaintances might hear of him before time was ripe.  This was a source of anxiety, but inevitable; one of the risks he dared.