ong effect she produced
on me: for, in the abstract, no womanly character could seem to have less
affinity for that of a shrinking, romantic, passionate youth than
Bertha's. She was keen, sarcastic, unimaginative, prematurely cynical,
remaining critical and unmoved in the most impressive scenes, inclined to
dissect all my favourite poems, and especially contemptous towards the
German lyrics which were my pet literature at that time. To this moment
I am unable to define my feeling towards her: it was not ordinary boyish
admiration, for she was the very opposite, even to the colour of her
hair, of the ideal woman who still remained to me the type of loveliness;
and she was without that enthusiasm for the great and good, which, even
at the moment of her strongest dominion over me, I should have declared
to be the highest element of character. But there is no tyranny more
complete than that which a self-centred negative nature exercises over a
morbidly sensitive nature perpetually craving sympathy and support. The
most independent people feel the effect of a man's silence in heightening
their value for his opinion--feel an additional triumph in conquering the
reverence of a critic habitually captious and satirical: no wonder, then,
that an enthusiastic self-distrusting youth should watch and wait before
the closed secret of a sarcastic woman's face, as if it were the shrine
of the doubtfully benignant deity who ruled his destiny. For a young
enthusiast is unable to imagine the total negation in another mind of the
emotions which are stirring his own: they may be feeble, latent,
inactive, he thinks, but they are there--they may be called forth;
sometimes, in moments of happy hallucination, he believes they may be
there in all the greater strength because he sees no outward sign of
them. And this effect, as I have intimated, was heightened to its utmost
intensity in me, because Bertha was the only being who remained for me in
the mysterious seclusion of soul that renders such youthful delusion
possible. Doubtless there was another sort of fascination at work--that
subtle physical attraction which delights in cheating our psychological
predictions, and in compelling the men who paint sylphs, to fall in love
with some _bonne et brave femme_, heavy-heeled and freckled.

Bertha's behaviour towards me was such as to encourage all my illusions,
to heighten my boyish passion, and make me more and more dependent on her
smiles.