’We won’t talk of it.  I suppose you stay in St. Helen’s for the night?’

‘There’s a train at 10.20.  I had better go by it.’

’Then let us forget everything but your own cheerful outlook.  At ten, I’ll walk with you to the station.’

Reluctantly at first, but before long with a quiet abandonment to the joy that would not be suppressed, Christian talked of his future wife.  In Janet he found every perfection.  Her mind was something more than the companion of his own.  Already she had begun to inspire him with a hopeful activity, and to foster the elements of true manliness which he was conscious of possessing, though they had never yet had free play.  With a sense of luxurious safety, he submitted to her influence, knowing none the less that it was in his power to complete her imperfect life.  Studiously he avoided the word ‘ideal’; from such vaporous illusions he had turned to the world’s actualities; his language dealt with concretes, with homely satisfactions, with prospects near enough to be soberly examined.

A hurry to catch the train facilitated parting.  Godwin promised to write in a few days.

He took a roundabout way back to his lodgings.  The rain was over, the sky had become placid.  He was conscious of an effect from Christian’s conversation which half counteracted the mood he would otherwise have indulged,—­the joy of liberty and of an outlook wholly new.  Sidwell might perchance be to him all that Janet was to Christian.  Was it not the luring of ‘ideals’ that prompted him to turn away from his long hope?

There must be no more untruthfulness.  Sidwell must have all the facts laid before her, and make her choice.

Without a clear understanding of what he was going to write, he sat down at eleven o’clock, and began, ‘Dear Miss Warricombe’.  Why not ‘Dear Sidwell’?  He took another sheet of paper.

’Dear Sidwell,—­To-night I can remember only your last word to me when we parted.  I cannot address you coldly, as though half a stranger.  Thus long I have kept silence about everything but the outward events of my life; now, in telling you of something that has happened, I must speak as I think.

’Early this evening I was surprised by a visit from Christian Moxey—­a name you know.  He came to tell me that his sister (she of whom I once spoke to you) was dead, and had bequeathed to me a large sum of money.  He said that it represented an income of eight hundred pounds.

’I knew nothing of Miss Moxey’s illness, and the news of her will came to me as a surprise.  In word or deed, I never sought more than her simple friendship—­and even that I believed myself to have forfeited.

’If I were to refuse this money, it would be in consequence of a scruple which I do not in truth respect.  Christian Moxey tells me that his sister’s desire was to enable me to live the life of a free man; and if I have any duty at all in the matter, surely it does not constrain me to defeat her kindness.  No condition whatever is attached.  The gift releases me from the necessity of leading a hopeless existence—­leaves me at liberty to direct my life how I will.