At the moment he might imagine himself to share the old
man's enthusiasm, or dream, or craze--whichever name were the most
appropriate--but not an hour had passed before he began to lament
that such a romance as this should envelop the life which had so
linked itself with his own. Immediately there arose in him a
struggle between the idealist tendency, of which he had his share,
and stubborn everyday sense, supported by his knowledge of the world
and of his own being--a struggle to continue for months, thwarting
the natural current of his life, racking his intellect, embittering
his heart's truest emotions. Conscious of mystery in Snowdon's
affairs, he had never dreamed of such a solution as this; the
probability was--so he had thought--that Michael received an
annuity under the will of his son who died in Australia. No word of
the old man's had ever hinted at wealth in his possession; the
complaints he frequently made of the ill use to which wealthy people
put their means seemed to imply a regret that he, with his purer
purposes, had no power of doing anything. There was no explaining
the manner of Jane's bringing-up if it were not necessary that she
should be able to support herself; the idea on which Michael acted
was not such as would suggest itself, even to Sidney's mind.
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