Sidwell breathed quickly.  Nothing he could have urged for himself would have affected her more deeply than this.  To date back and extend the period of his love for her was a flattery more subtle than Peak imagined.

‘Why didn’t you tell me that the day before yesterday?’ she asked, with tremulous bosom.

’I had no wish to remind myself of baseness in the midst of a pure joy.’

She was silent, then exclaimed, in accents of pain: 

’Why should you have thought it necessary to be other than yourself?  Couldn’t you see, at first meeting with us, that we were not bigoted people?  Didn’t you know that Buckland had accustomed us to understand how common it is nowadays for people to throw off the old religion?  Would father have looked coldly on you if he had known that you followed where so many good and thoughtful men were leading?’

He regarded her anxiously.

’I had heard from Buckland that your father was strongly prejudiced; that you also were quite out of sympathy with the new thought.’

‘He exaggerated—­even then.’

’Exaggerated?  But on what plea could I have come to live in this neighbourhood?  How could I have kept you in sight—­tried to win your interest?  I had no means, no position.  The very thought of encouraging my love for you demanded some extraordinary step.  What course was open to me?’

Sidwell let her head droop.

‘I don’t know.  You might perhaps have discovered a way.’

’But what was the use, when the mere fact of my heresy would have forbidden hope from the outset?’

‘Why should it have done so?’

’Why?  You know very well that you could never even have been friendly with the man who wrote that thing in the review.’

’But here is the proof how much better it is to behave truthfully!  In this last year I have changed so much that I find it difficult to understand the strength of my former prejudices.  What is it to me now that you speak scornfully of attempts to reconcile things that can’t be reconciled?  I understand the new thought, and how natural it is for you to accept it.  If only I could have come to know you well, your opinions would not have stood between us.’

Peak made a slight gesture, and smiled incredulously.

‘You think so now.’

‘And I have such good reason for my thought,’ rejoined Sidwell, earnestly, ’that when you said you loved me, my only regret in looking to the future was—­that you had resolved to be a clergyman.’

He leaned back in the chair, and let a hand fall on his knee.  The gesture seemed to signify a weary relinquishment of concern in what they were discussing.

‘How could I foresee that?’ he uttered, in a corresponding tone.