barely an interesting pitiable acquaintance
in his eyes--no more?

It cankered his heart to think he was confronted by the closest instance
of a worse state of things than any he had assumed in the pleasant
social philosophy and satire of his essays.

The moral rightness of this man's life was worthy of all praise; but in
spite of some intellectual acumen, Knight had in him a modicum of that
wrongheadedness which is mostly found in scrupulously honest people.
With him, truth seemed too clean and pure an abstraction to be so
hopelessly churned in with error as practical persons find it. Having
now seen himself mistaken in supposing Elfride to be peerless, nothing
on earth could make him believe she was not so very bad after all.

He lingered in town a fortnight, doing little else than vibrate between
passion and opinions. One idea remained intact--that it was better
Elfride and himself should not meet.

When he surveyed the volumes on his shelves--few of which had been
opened since Elfride first took possession of his heart--their untouched
and orderly arrangement reproached him as an apostate from the old faith
of his youth and early manhood. He had deserted those never-failing
friends, so they seemed to say, for an unstable delight in a ductile
woman, which had ended all in bitterness. The spirit of self-denial,
verging on asceticism, which had ever animated Knight in old times,
announced itself as having departed with the birth of love, with it
having gone the self-respect which had compensated for the lack
of self-gratification. Poor little Elfride, instead of holding,
as formerly, a place in his religion, began to assume the hue of a
temptation. Perhaps it was human and correctly natural that Knight
never once thought whether he did not owe her a little sacrifice for her
unchary devotion in saving his life.

With a consciousness of having thus, like Antony, kissed away kingdoms
and provinces, he next considered how he had revealed his higher secrets
and intentions to her, an unreserve he would never have allowed himself
with any man living. How was it that he had not been able to refrain
from telling her of adumbrations heretofore locked in the closest
strongholds of his mind?

Knight's was a robust intellect, which could escape outside the
atmosphere of heart, and perceive that his own love, as well as other
people's, could be reduced by change of scene and circumstances. At the
same time the perception was