He regarded her anxiously.
‘I had heard from Buckland that your father was strongly prejudiced; that you also were quite out of sympathy with the new thought.’
‘He exaggerated—even then.’
‘Exaggerated? But on what plea could I have come to live in this neighbourhood? How could I have kept you in sight—tried to win your interest? I had no means, no position. The very thought of encouraging my love for you demanded some extraordinary step. What course was open to me?’
Sidwell let her head droop.
‘I don’t know. You might perhaps have discovered a way.’
‘But what was the use, when the mere fact of my heresy would have forbidden hope from the outset?’
‘Why should it have done so?’
‘Why? You know very well that you could never even have been friendly with the man who wrote that thing in
