elf if he really cared for her. He fell in love
with himself, married himself, and soon after discovered that he did not
know who his wife was. After his marriage he became wholly unjust to
her, and allowed her defects to veil the whole of her character.

The ultra-evangelical school in the Church preserved at that time the
religious life of England, although in a very strange form. They
believed and felt certain vital truths, although they did not know what
was vital and what has not. They had real experience, and their roots
lay, not upon the surface, but went deep down to the perennial springs,
and the articles of their creed became a vehicle for the expression of
the most real emotions. Evangelicalism, however, to Mr. Cardew was
dangerous. He was always prone to self-absorption, and the tendency was
much increased by his religion. He lived an entirely interior life, and
his joys and sorrows were not those of Abchurch, but of another sphere.
Abchurch feared wet weather, drought, ague, rheumatism, loss of money,
and, on Sundays, feared hell, but Mr. Cardew's fears were spiritual or
even spectral. His self-communion produced one strange and perilous
result, a habit of prolonged evolution from particular ideas uncorrected
by reference to what was around him. If anything struck him it remained
with him, deduction followed deduction in practice unfortunately as well
as in thought, and he was ultimately landed in absurdity or something
worse. The wholesome influence of ordinary men and women never permits
us to link conclusion to conclusion from a single premiss, or at any rate
to act upon our conclusions, but Mr. Cardew had no world at Abchurch save
himself. He saw himself in things, and not as they were. A sunset was
just what it might happen to symbolise to him at the time, and his
judgments upon events and persons were striking, but they were frequently
judgments upon creations of his own imagination, and were not in the
least apposite to what was actually before him. The happy, artistic,
Shakespearean temper, mirroring the world like a lake, was altogether
foreign to him.

When he saw Catharine a new love awoke in him instantaneously. Was it
legitimate or illegitimate? In many cases of the same kind the answer
would be that the question is one which cannot be put. No matter how
pure the intellectual bond between man and woman may be, it is certain to
carry with it a sentiment which cannot be explained