t Marcella
regarded him from time to time with furtive interest. Presently he
learnt that Christian and his sister were on a short visit at the house
of their relatives; their home was in London. Marcella had seated
herself stiffly by a window, and seemed to pay more attention to the
view without than to the talk which went on, until dinner was announced.

Speculating on all he saw, Godwin noticed that Christian Moxey showed a
marked preference for the youngest of his cousins, a girl of eighteen,
whose plain features were frequently brightened with a happy and very
pleasant smile. When he addressed her (by the name of Janet) his voice
had a playful kindness which must have been significant to everyone who
heard it. At dinner, his place was by her side, and he attended to her
with more than courtesy. This astonished Peak. He deemed it incredible
that any man should conceive a tender feeling for a girl so far from
beautiful. Constantly occupied with thought of sexual attachments, he
had never imagined anything of the kind apart from loveliness of
feature in the chosen object; his instincts were, in fact, revolted by
the idea of love for such a person as Janet Moxey. Christian seemed to
be degraded by such a suggestion. In his endeavour to solve the
mystery, Godwin grew half unconscious of the other people about him.

Such play of the imaginative and speculative faculties accounts for the
common awkwardness of intelligent young men in society that is strange
to them. Only the cultivation of a double consciousness puts them
finally at ease. Impossible to converse with suavity, and to heed the
forms of ordinary good-breeding, when the brain is absorbed in all
manner of new problems: one must learn to act a part, to control the
facial mechanism, to observe and anticipate, even whilst the intellect
is spending its sincere energy on subjects unavowed. The perfectly
graceful man will always be he who has no strong apprehension either of
his own personality or of that of others, who lives on the surface of
things, who can be interested without emotion, and surprised without
contemplative impulse. Never yet had Godwin Peak uttered a word that
was worth listening to, or made a remark that declared his mental
powers, save in most familiar colloquy. He was beginning to understand
the various reasons of his seeming clownishness, but this very process
of self-study opposed an obstacle to improvement.

When he found himself obliged to