Wilfrid stood like a machine with a thousand wheels in revolt.
Sensations pricked at ideas, and immediately left them to account for
their existence as they best could. The ideas committed suicide without
a second's consideration. He felt the great gurgling sea in which they
were drowned heave and throb. Then came a fresh set, that poised better
on the slack-rope of his understanding. By degrees, a buried dread in
his brain threw off its shroud. The thought that there was something
wrong with his father stood clearly over him, to be swallowed at once in
the less tangible belief that a harm had come to Emilia--not was coming,
but had come. Passion thinks wilfully when it thinks at all. That night
he lay in a deep anguish, revolving the means by which he might help and
protect her. There seemed no way open, save by making her his own; and
did he belong to himself?. What bound him to Lady Charlotte? She was
not lovely or loving. He had not even kissed her hand; yet she held him
in a chain.

The two men composing most of us at the outset of actual life began their
deadly wrestle within him, both having become awakened. If they wait for
circumstance, that steady fire will fuse them into one, who is commonly a
person of some strength; but throttling is the custom between them, and
we are used to see men of murdered halves. These men have what they
fought for: they are unaware of any guilt that may be charged against
them, though they know that they do not embrace Life; and so it is that
we have vague discontent too universal. Change, O Lawgiver! the length
of our minority, and let it not end till this battle is thoroughly fought
out in approving daylight. The period of our duality should be one as
irresponsible in your eyes as that of our infancy. Is he we call a young
man an individual--who is a pair of alternately kicking scales? Is he
educated, when he dreams not that he is divided? He has drunk Latin like
a vital air, and can quote what he remembers of Homer; but how has he