‘We have made up our minds, after much uncertainty,’ she said.  ’My brother Buckland seems to think that we are falling behind in civilisation.’

‘So we are,’ affirmed Fanny, ’as Mr. Peak would admit, if only he could be sincere.’

‘Am I never sincere then, Miss Fanny?’ Godwin asked.

’I only meant to say that nobody can be when the rules of politeness interfere.  Don’t you think it’s a pity?  We might tell one another the truth in a pleasant way.’

’I agree with you.  But then we must be civilised indeed.  How do you think of London, Miss Warricombe?  Which of its aspects most impresses you?’

Sidwell answered rather indefinitely, and ended by mentioning that in Villette, which she had just re-read, Charlotte Bronte makes a contrast between the City and the West End, and greatly prefers the former.

‘Do you agree with her, Mr. Peak?’

’No, I can’t.  One understands the mood in which she wrote that; but a little more experience would have led her to see the ccntrast in a different light.  That term, the West End, includes much that is despicable, but it means also the best results of civilisation.  The City is hateful to me, and for a reason which I only understood after many an hour of depression in walking about its streets.  It represents the ascendency of the average man.’

Sidwell waited for fuller explanation.

‘A liberal mind,’ Peak continued, ’is revolted by the triumphal procession that roars perpetually through the City highways.  With myriad voices the City bellows its brutal scorn of everything but material advantage.  There every humanising influence is contemptuously disregarded.  I know, of course, that the trader may have his quiet home, where art and science and humanity are the first considerations; but the mass of traders, corporate and victorious, crush all such things beneath their heels.  Take your stand (or try to do so) anywhere near the Exchange; the hustling and jolting to which you are exposed represents the very spirit of the life about you.  Whatever is gentle and kindly and meditative must here go to the wall—­trampled, spattered, ridiculed.  Here the average man has it all his own way—­a gross utilitarian power.’

‘Yes, I can see that,’ Sidwell replied, thoughtfully.  ’And perhaps it also represents the triumphant forces of our time.’

He looked keenly at her, with a smile of delight.

’That also!  The power which centres in the world’s money-markets—­ plutocracy.’

In conversing with Sidwell, he had never before found an opportunity of uttering his vehement prejudices.  The gentler side of his character had sometimes expressed itself, but those impulses which were vastly more significant lay hidden beneath the dissimulation he consistently practised.  For the first time he was able to look into Sidwell’s face with honest directness, and what he saw there strengthened his determination to talk on with the same freedom.