He had at last said that to Lucy
which made it impossible for him to offer his hand to any other woman. He
had not, in truth, asked her to be his wife; but he had told her that he
loved her, and could never love any other woman. He had asked for no
answer to this assurance, and then he had left her.
In the course of that afternoon he did question himself as to his conduct
to this girl, and subjected himself to some of the rigours of a cross-
examination. He was not a man who could think of a girl as the one human
being whom he loved above all others, and yet look forward with equanimity
to the idea of doing her an injury. He could understand that a man unable
to marry should be reticent as to his feelings, supposing him to have been
weak enough to have succumbed to a passion which could only mar his own
prospects. He was frank enough in owning to himself that he had been thus
weak. The weakness had come upon himself early in life, and was there, an
established fact. The girl was to him unlike any other girl, or any man.
There was to him a sweetness in her companionship which he could not
analyse. She was not beautiful.
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