transport was too poignant; in the end it drove him to a fierce outbreak of despairing wrath.  How could he dream that such bliss would be the reward of despicable artifice, of calculated dishonour?  Born a rebel, how could his be the fate of those happy men who are at one with the order of things?  The prophecy of a heart wrung with anguish foretold too surely that for him was no rapturous love, no joy of noble wedlock.  Solitude, now and for ever, or perchance some base alliance of the flesh, which would involve his later days in sordid misery.

In moods of discouragement he thought with envy of his old self, his life in London lodgings, his freedom in obscurity.  It belongs to the pathos of human nature that only in looking back can one appreciate the true value of those long tracts of monotonous ease which, when we are living through them, seem of no account save in relation to past or future; only at a distance do we perceive that the exemption from painful shock was in itself a happiness, to be rated highly in comparison with most of those disturbances known as moments of joy.  A wise man would have entertained no wish but that he might grow old in that same succession of days and weeks and years.  Without anxiety concerning his material needs (certainly the most substantial of earthly blessings), his leisure not inadequate to the gratification of a moderate studiousness, with friends who offered him an ever-ready welcome,—­was it not much?  If he were condemned to bachelorhood, his philosophy was surely capable of teaching him that the sorrows and anxieties he thus escaped made more than an offset against the satisfactions he must forego.  Reason had no part in the fantastic change to which his life had submitted, nor was he ever supported by a hope which would bear his cooler investigation.

And yet hope had her periods of control, for there are times when the mind wearies of rationality, and, as it were in self-defense, in obedience to the instinct of progressive life, craves a specious comfort.  It seemed undeniable that Mr. Warricombe regarded him with growth of interest, invited his conversation more unreservedly.  He began to understand Martin’s position with regard to religion and science, and thus could utter himself more securely.  At length he ventured to discourse with some amplitude on his own convictions—­ the views, that is to say, which he thought fit to adopt in his character of a liberal Christian.  It was on an afternoon of early August that this opportunity presented itself.  They sat together in the study, and Martin was in a graver mood than usual, not much disposed to talk, but a willing listener.  There had been mention of a sermon at the Cathedral, in which the preacher declared his faith that the maturity of science would dispel all antagonisms between it and revelation.

‘The difficulties of the unbeliever,’ said Peak, endeavouring to avoid a sermonising formality, though with indifferent success, ’are, of course, of two kinds; there’s the theory of evolution, and there’s modern biblical criticism.  The more I study these objections, the less able I am to see how they come in conflict with belief in Christianity as a revealed religion.’