He had placed her on another level--one, perhaps, that few women would have wished to occupy.

But Beatrice was thankful to him.

It was the first taste of supremacy that she had ever known.
It is something to stir the proud heart of such a woman as Beatrice, in that moment when for the first time she feels herself a conqueror, victorious, not through the vulgar advantage of her sex, not by the submission of man's coarser sense, but rather by the overbalancing weight of mind.
"Do you know," she said, suddenly looking up, "you make me very proud," and she stretched out her hand to him.
He took it, and, bending, touched it with his lips.

There was no possibility of misinterpreting the action, and though she coloured a little--for, till then, no man had even kissed the tip of her finger--she did not misinterpret it.

It was an act of homage, and that was all.
And so they sealed the compact of their perfect friendship for ever and a day.
Then came a moment's silence.