After spending a fortnight with his mother at Agworth, he went to
London, and for a time thought as little of Adela as of any other
woman. New interests claimed him, interests purely intellectual, the
stronger that his mind seemed just aroused from a long sleep. He
threw himself into various studies with more zeal than he had
hitherto devoted to such interests; not that he had as yet any
definite projects, but solely because it was his nature to be in
pursuit of some excellence and to scorn mere acquiescence in a life
of every-day colour. He lived all but in loneliness, and when the
change had had time to work upon him his thoughts began to revert to
Adela, to her alone of those who stood on the other side of the
gulf. She came before his eyes as a vision of purity; it was
soothing to picture her face and to think of her walking in the
spring meadows. He thought of her as of a white rose, dew-besprent,
and gently swayed by the sweet air of a sunny morning; a white rose
newly spread, its heart virgin from the hands of shaping Nature. He
could not decide what quality, what absence of thought, made Adela
so distinct to him. Was it perhaps the exquisite delicacy apparent
in all she did or said? Even the most reverent thought seemed gross
in touching her; the mind flitted round about her, kept from contact
by a supreme modesty, which she alone could inspire If her head were
painted, it must be against the tenderest eastern sky; all
associations with her were of the morning, when heatless rays strike
level across the moist earth, of simple devoutness which renders
thanks for the blessing of a new day, of mercy robed like the zenith
at dawn.

His study just now was of the early Italians, in art and literature.
There was more of Adela than he perceived in the impulse which
guided him in that direction. When he came to read the 'Vita Nuova,'