CHAPTER V

THE CANDIDATE

Leigh awoke the next morning with a sense that some profound change had
come into his life. His mood was similar to that of a man on the verge
of a trip to foreign lands, who, with all the humdrum existence that
had earned it behind him, and all the delights of adventure before,
waits only the turn of wind or tide to be away. The comparison is not
inept, for he had lived laborious days, postponing deliberately or
missing by chance, he scarcely knew which, the experience he now felt
to be impending. His time of life was peculiarly favourable for the
growth of a master passion, one which, as the old saying has it, might
make or mar him. The feverish struggles of early youth had landed him
in a position somewhat better than that attained by the majority of his
contemporaries. He had reached a breathing-place, where he could pause
with a sense of deeds accomplished and of possible rewards in the
future.

A realisation of the fact that his circumstances and position fairly
justified him in entertaining seriously the thought of love lessened in
no way the ideality of that thought. It was not because Felicity
Wycliffe was the first attractive woman to come into his life at the
right moment that he had fallen in love with her. He told himself that
he could have met any other woman in the world at that time with
impunity; and, conversely, had he met her years before, when his suit
must needs have been hopeless, he would have loved her no less,