'He had gone too far to retire; he would be guilty of sheer treachery to Jane; he would break the old man's heart.' All which meant merely that he loved the girl, and that it would be like death to part from her.

But why part?
What had conscience got hold of, that it made all this clamour?
Oh, it was simple enough; Sidney not only had no faith in the practicability of such a life's work as Michael visioned, but he had the profoundest distrust of his own moral strength if he should allow himself to be committed to lifelong renunciation.

'I am no hero,' he said, 'no enthusiast.

The time when my whole being could be stirred by social questions has gone by.

I am a man in love, and in proportion as my love has strengthened, so has my old artist-self revived in me, until now I can imagine no bliss so perfect as to marry Jane Snowdon and go off to live with her amid fields and trees, where no echo of the suffering world should ever reach us.' To confess this was to make it terribly certain that sooner or later the burden of conscientiousness would become intolerable.