Just when the winter had set in, he received an offer of a post in chemical works at St. Helen’s, and without delay travelled northwards.  The appointment was a poor one, and seemed unlikely to be a step to anything better, but his resources would not last more than another half year, and employment of whatever kind came as welcome relief to the tedium of his existence.  Established in his new abode, he at length wrote to Sidwell.  She answered him at once in a short letter which he might have shown to anyone, so calm were its expressions of interest, so uncompromising its words of congratulation.  It began ‘Dear Mr. Peak’, and ended with ’Yours sincerely’.  Well, he had used the same formalities, and had uttered his feelings with scarcely more of warmth.  Disappointment troubled him for a moment, and for a moment only.  He was so far from Exeter, and further still from the life that he had led there.  It seemed to him all but certain that Sidwell wrote coldly, with the intention of discouraging his hopes.  What hope was he so foolish as to entertain?  His position poorer than ever, what could justify him in writing love-letters to a girl who, even if willing to marry him, must not do so until he had a suitable home to offer her?

Since his maturity, he had never known so long a freedom from passion.  One day he wrote to Earwaker:  ’I begin to your independence with regard to women.  It would be a strange thing if I became a convert to that way of thinking, but once or twice of late I have imagined that it was happening.  My mind has all but recovered its tone, and I am able to read, to think—­I mean really to think, not to muse.  I get through big and solid books.  Presently, if your offer still hold good, I shall send you a scrap of writing on something or other.  The pestilent atmosphere of this place seems to invigorate me.  Last Saturday evening I took train, got away into the hills, and spent the Sunday geologising.  And a curious experience befell me,—­one I had long, long ago, in the Whitelaw days.  Sitting down before some interesting strata, I lost myself in something like nirvana, grew so subject to the idea of vastness in geological time that all human desires and purposes shrivelled to ridiculous unimportance.  Awaking for a minute, I tried to realise the passion which not long ago rent and racked me, but I was flatly incapable of understanding it.  Will this philosophic state endure?  Perhaps I have used up all my emotional energy?  I hardly know whether to hope or fear it.’

About midsummer, when his short holiday (he would only be released for a fortnight) drew near, he was surprised by another letter from Sidwell.