The last words were flung out defiantly.  He quivered as he spoke, and his face flushed.

‘I can’t wish you success,’ returned his friend, with a grave smile.

’You couldn’t help it sounding like a sneer, if you did.  The desire is hopeless, of course.  It’s because I know that, that I have made up my mind to travel for a year or two; it’ll help me on towards the age when I shall regard all women with indifference.  We won’t talk about it any more.’

’One question.  You seriously believe that you could find satisfaction in the life to which such a marriage would condemn you?’

‘What life?’ asked Peak, impatiently.

’That of an average gentleman, let us say, with house in town and country, with friends whose ruling motive was social propriety.’

‘I could enjoy the good and throw aside the distasteful.’

’What about the distastefulness of your wife’s crass conventionalism, especially in religion?’

’It would not be crass, to begin with.  If her religion were genuine, I could tolerate it well enough; if it were merely a form, I could train her to my own opinions.  Society is growing liberal—­ the best of it.  Please remember that I have in mind a woman of the highest type our civilisation can produce.’

‘Then you mustn’t look for her in society!’ cried Earwaker.

’I don’t care; where you will, so long as she had always lived among people of breeding and high education, and never had her thoughts soiled with the vile contact of poverty.’

Earwaker started up and reached a volume from a shelf.  Quickly finding the desired page, he began to read aloud: 

’Dear, had the world in its caprice
Deigned to proclaim—­I know you both,
Have recognised your plighted troth,
Am sponsor for you; live in peace!’—­

He read to the end of the poem, and then looked up with an admiring smile.

‘An ideal!’ exclaimed Peak.  ’An ideal akin to Murger’s and Musset’s grisettes, who never existed.’

’An ideal, most decidedly.  But pray what is this consummate lady you have in mind?  An ideal every bit as much, and of the two I prefer Browning’s.  For my own part, I am a polygamist; my wives live in literature, and too far asunder to be able to quarrel.  Impossible women, but exquisite.  They shall suffice to me.’

Peak rose, sauntered about the room for a minute or two, then said: 

’I have just got a title for my paper.  I shall call it “The New Sophistry."’

‘Do very well, I should think,’ replied the other, smiling.  ’Will you let me see it when it’s done?’

’Who knows if I shall finish it?  Nothing I ever undertook has been finished yet—­nothing won that I ever aimed at.  Good night.  Let me hear about Malkin.’

In a week’s time Godwin received another summons to Staple Inn, with promise of Malkin’s assured presence.  In reply he wrote: