I wished to do the woman good--to serve her in some way--to secure her some benefit by any means, no matter how difficult, which might be within my power.

I knew that I loved her--loved her most truly and fervently; there was no need for self-analysis to tell me that.

And, moreover, no self-analysis, or any other mental process that I knew of, could help my one doubt: whether she was an ordinary woman (or an extraordinary woman, for the matter of that) in some sore and terrible straits; or else one who lay under some dreadful condition, only partially alive, and not mistress of herself or her acts.

Whichever her condition might be, there was in my own feeling a superfluity of affection for her.

The self-analysis taught me one thing, at any rate--that I had for her, to start with, an infinite pity which had softened towards her my whole being, and had already mastered merely selfish desire.