her. There is no love so wild, no, not even the love of a mistress,
as that which is sometimes found in a father or mother for a child,
and often for one who is physically or even mentally defective. It
is not subject to satiety and lassitude, and grows with age. To
Kate also her father was more than the whole world of men and women.
The best of friends weary of one another and large spaces of
separation are necessary, but these two were always happy together.
Theirs was the blessed intimacy which is never unmeaning and yet can
endure silence. They never felt that unpleasant stricture of the
chest caused by a search for entertainment or for some subject of
conversation.

Nevertheless, although Mr. Radcliffe was so much to Kate, she was
herself, and consequently had wants which were not his. There had
been born in her before 1844 a passion which could not be satisfied
by any human being, a leaning forward and outward to something she
knew not what. The sun rose over the fells; they were purple in
sunset; the constellations slowly climbed the eastern sky on a clear
night, and her heart lay bare: she wondered, she was bowed down
with awe, and she also longed unspeakably. When she was about
twenty-five years old she accepted an invitation to spend a few
weeks with a friend in London. She was fond of music, and on her
first Sunday she could not resist the temptation to hear a mass by
Mozart in Saint Mary's, Moorfields. She was overpowered, and
something moved in her soul which she had never felt in the church
at home. She worshipped at Saint Mary's several times afterwards,
and her friend rallied her on conversion to Roman Catholicism.

'It is the music, Kate.'