to the vast crowd of people in London who are unimportant; almost useless; to whom it is a charity to offer employment; who are conscious of possessing no gift which makes them of any value to anybody, and he will then comprehend the divine efficacy of the affection of that woman to whom he is dear.  God’s mercy be praised ever more for it!  I cannot write poetry, but if I could, no theme would tempt me like that of love to such a person as I was—­not love, as I say again, to the hero, but love to the Helot.  Over and over again, when I have thought about it, I have felt my poor heart swell with a kind of uncontrollable fervour.  I have often, too, said to myself that this love is no delusion.  If we were to set it down as nothing more than a merciful cheat on the part of the Creator, however pleasant it might be, it would lose its charm.  If I were to think that my wife’s devotion to me is nothing more than the simple expression of a necessity to love somebody, that there is nothing in me which justifies such devotion, I should be miserable.  Rather, I take it, is the love of woman to man a revelation of the relationship in which God stands to him—­of what ought to be, in fact.  In the love of a woman to the man who is of no account God has provided us with a true testimony of what is in His own heart.  I often felt this when looking at myself and at Ellen.  “What is there in me?” I have said, “is she not the victim of some self-created deception?” and I was wretched till I considered that in her I saw the Divine Nature itself, and that her passion was a stream straight from the Highest.  The love of woman is, in other words, a living witness never failing of an actuality in God which otherwise we should never know.  This led me on to connect it with Christianity; but I am getting incoherent and must stop.

My employment now was so incessant, for it was still necessary that I should write for my newspaper—­although my visits to the House of Commons had perforce ceased—­that I had no time for any schemes or dreams such as those which had tormented me when I had more leisure.  In one respect this was a blessing.  Destiny now had prescribed for me.  I was no longer agitated by ignorance of what I ought to do.  My present duty was obviously to get my own living, and having got that, I could do little besides save continue the Sundays with M’Kay.

We were almost entirely alone.  We had no means of making any friends.  We had no money, and no gifts of any kind.  We were neither of us witty nor attractive, but I have often wondered, nevertheless, what it was which prevented us from obtaining acquaintance with persons who thronged to houses in which I could see nothing worth a twopenny omnibus fare.  Certain it is, that we went out of our way sometimes to induce people to call upon us whom we thought we should like; but, if they came once or twice, they invariably dropped off, and we saw no more of them.  This behaviour