Urged by the approaching departure, Sidwell overcame her reluctance to write to Godwin before she had a letter to answer.  It was done in a mood of intolerable despondency, when life looked barren before her, and the desire of love all but triumphed over every other consideration.  The letter written and posted, she would gladly have recovered it—­reserved, formal as it was.  Cowardly still; but then Godwin had not written.

She kept a watch upon the postman, and again, when Godwin’s reply was delivered, escaped detection.

Hardly did she dare to open the envelope.  Her letter had perchance been more significant than she supposed; and did not the mere fact of her writing invite a lover’s frankness?

But the reply was hardly more moving than if it had come from a total stranger.  For a moment she felt relieved; in an hour’s time she suffered indescribable distress.  Godwin wrote—­so she convinced herself after repeated perusals—­as if discharging a task; not a word suggested tenderness.  Had the letter been unsolicited, she could have used it like the former one; but it was the answer to an appeal.  The phrases she had used were still present in her mind.  ’I am anxious . . . it is more than half a year since you wrote . . .  I have been expecting . . . anything that is of interest to you will interest me. . . .’  How could she imagine that this was reserved and formal?  Shame fell upon her; she locked herself from all companionship, and wept in rebellion against the laws of life.

A fortnight later, she wrote from Royat to Sylvia Moorhouse.  It was a long epistle, full of sunny descriptions, breathing renewed vigour of body and mind.  The last paragraph ran thus: 

’Yesterday was my birthday; I was twenty-eight.  At this age, it is wisdom in a woman to remind herself that youth is over.  I don’t regret it; let it go with all its follies!  But I am sorry that I have no serious work in life; it is not cheerful to look forward to perhaps another eight-and-twenty years of elegant leisure—­that is to say, of wearisome idleness.  What can I do?  Try and think of some task for me, something that will last a lifetime.’

Part VII

CHAPTER I

At the close of a sultry day in September, when factory fumes hung low over the town of St. Helen’s, and twilight thickened luridly, and the air tasted of sulphur, and the noises of the streets, muffled in their joint effect, had individually an ominous distinctness, Godwin Peak walked with languid steps to his lodgings and the meal that there awaited him.  His vitality was at low ebb.  The routine of his life disgusted him; the hope of release was a mockery.  What was to be the limit of this effort to redeem his character?  How many years before the past could be forgotten, and his claim to the style of honourable be deemed secure?  Rubbish!  It