This summer Peak became a semi-graduate of London University.  To avoid the risk of a casual meeting with acquaintances, he did not go to London, but sat for his examination at the nearest provincial centre.  The revival of boyish tremors at the successive stages of this business was anything but agreeable; it reminded him, with humiliating force, how far he had strayed from the path indicated to his self-respecting manhood.  Defeat would have strengthened in overwhelming revolt all the impulses which from time to time urged him to abandon his servile course.  But there was no chance of his failing to satisfy the examiners.  With ‘Honours’ he had now nothing to do; enough for his purpose that in another year’s time he would write himself Bachelor of Arts, and thus simplify the clerical preliminaries.  In what quarter he was to look for a curacy remained uncertain.  Meanwhile his enterprise seemed to prosper, and success emboldened his hopes.

Hopes which were no longer vague, but had defined themselves in a way which circumstances made inevitable.  Though he had consistently guarded himself against the obvious suggestions arising out of his intercourse with the Warricombe family, though he still emphasised every discouraging fact, and strove to regard it as axiomatic that nothing could be more perilous to his future than a hint of presumption or self-interest in word or deed beneath that friendly roof, it was coming to pass that he thought of Sidwell not only as the type of woman pursued by his imagination, but as herself the object of his converging desires.  Comparison of her with others had no result but the deepening of that impression she had at first made upon him.  Sidwell exhibited all the qualities which most appealed to him in her class; in addition, she had the charms of a personality which he could not think of common occurrence.  He was yet far from understanding her; she exercised his powers of observation, analysis, conjecture, as no other person had ever done; each time he saw her (were it but for a moment) he came away with some new perception of her excellence, some hitherto unmarked grace of person or mind whereon to meditate.  He had never approached a woman who possessed this power at once of fascinating his senses and controlling his intellect to a glad reverence.  Whether in her presence or musing upon her in solitude, he found that the unsparing naturalism of his scrutiny was powerless to degrade that sweet, pure being.

Rare, under any circumstances, is the passionate love which controls every motive of heart and mind; rarer still that form of it which, with no assurance of reciprocation, devotes exclusive ardour to an object only approachable through declared obstacles.  Godwin Peak was not framed for romantic languishment.  In general, the more complex a man’s mechanism, and the more pronounced his habit of introspection, the less capable is he of loving with vehemence and constancy.  Heroes of passion are for the most