He had felt himself
for a day or two to be so terribly knocked about that the world was
nothing to him. For a month or two he had regarded himself as a man
peculiarly circumstanced,--marked for misfortune and for a solitary
life. Then he had retricked his beams, and before twelve months were
passed had almost forgotten his love. He knew now, or thought that
he knew,--that the continued indulgence of a hopeless passion was a
folly opposed to the very instincts of man and woman,--a weakness
showing want of fibre and of muscle in the character. But here was
a woman who could calmly conceal her passion in its early days and
marry a man whom she did not love in spite of it, who could make her
heart, her feelings, and all her feminine delicacy subordinate to
material considerations, and nevertheless could not rid herself of
her passion in the course of years, although she felt its existence
to be an intolerable burden on her conscience. On which side lay
strength of character and on which side weakness? Was he strong or
was she?
And he tried to examine his own feelings in regard to her.
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