er came like
a stronger beast, and extinguished the safety there was in the thing it
consumed, by growing so excessive as to require tempering with drops of
compassion; which prepared the way for a formal act of cold forgiveness;
and the moment that was conceived, he had a passion to commit the
horrible magnanimity, and did it on a grand scale, and dissolved his
Heart in the grandeur, and slaved himself again.

Far from expungeing the doubt of her, forgiveness gave it a stamp and
an edge. His renewed enslavement set him perusing his tyrant keenly, as
nauseated captives do; and he saw, that forgiveness was beside the case.
For this Nesta Victoria Radnor would not crave it or accept it. He had
mentally played the woman to her superior vivaciousness too long for him
to see her taking a culprit's attitude. What she did, she intended to
do. The mother would not have encouraged her. The father idolized her;
and the father was a frank hedonist, whose blood... speculation on
horseback gallops to barren extremes. Eyes like hers--if there had not
been the miserable dupes of girls! Conduct is the sole guide to female
character. That likewise may be the hypocrite's mask.

Popular artists, intent to gratify the national taste for effects called
realistic, have figured in scenes of battle the raying fragments of a
man from impact of a cannon-ball on his person. Truly thus it may be
when flesh contends. But an image of the stricken and scattered mind
of the man should, though deficient in the attraction, have a greater
significance, forasmuch as it does not exhibit him entirely liquefied
and showered into space; it leaves him his legs for the taking of
further steps. Dudley, standing on the platform of Nesta's train, one
half minute too late, according to his desire before he put himself in
motion, was as wildly torn as the vapour shredded streaming to fingers
and threads off the upright columnar shot of the shriek from the boiler.
He wished every mad antagonism to his wishes: that he might see her, be
blind to her; embrace, discard; heal his wound, and tear it wider. He
thanked her for the grossness of an offence precluding excuses. He was
aware of a glimmer of advocacy in the very grossness. He conjured-up her
features, and they said, her innocence was the sinner; they scoffed at
him for the dupe he was willing to be. She had enigma's mouth, with the
eyes of morning.

More than most girls, she was the girl-Sphinx to him because of