they do not embrace Life; and so it is that
we have vague discontent too universal. Change, O Lawgiver! the length of
our minority, and let it not end till this battle is thoroughly fought
out in approving daylight. The period of our duality should be one as
irresponsible in your eyes as that of our infancy. Is he we call a young
man an individual--who is a pair of alternately kicking scales? Is he
educated, when he dreams not that he is divided? He has drunk Latin like
a vital air, and can quote what he remembers of Homer; but how has he
been fortified for this tremendous conflict of opening manhood, which is
to our life here what is the landing of a soul to the life to come?

Meantime, it is a bad business when the double-man goes about kneeling at
the feet of more than one lady. Society (to give that institution its
due) permits him to seek partial invulnerability by dipping himself in a
dirty Styx, which corrects, as we hear said, the adolescent tendency to
folly. Wilfrid's sentiment had served him (well or ill as it may be), by
keeping him from a headlong plunge in the protecting river; and his folly
was unchastened. He did not even contemplate an escape from the net at
Emilia's expense. The idea came. The idea will come to a young man in
such a difficulty. "My mistress! My glorious stolen fruit! My dark angel
of love!" He deserves a little credit for seeing that Emilia never could
be his mistress, in the debased sense of the term. Union with her meant
life-long union, he knew. Ultimate mental subjection he may also have
seen in it, unconsciously. For, hazy thoughts of that nature may mix with
the belief that an alliance with her degrades us, in this curious
hotch-potch of emotions known to the world as youthful man. A wife
superior to her husband makes him ridiculous wilfully, if the wretch is
to be laughed at; but a mistress thus ill-matched cannot fail to cast the
absurdest light on her monstrous dwarf-custodian. Wilfrid had the
sagacity to perceive, and the keen apprehension of ridicule to shrink
from, the picture. Besides, he was beginning to love Emilia. His struggle
now was to pluck his passion from his heart; and such was already his
plight that he saw no other way of attempting it than by taking horse and
riding furiously in the direction of Besworth.

CHAPTER XXXI

"I am curious to see what you will make of this gathering. I can cook a
small company myself. It requires the powers of a giantess to