How far was it mere passion of the senses, which gratification would speedily kill?
In the case of his feeling towards Maud Enderby there was no such doubt.

Never was his blood so calm as in her presence.

She was to him a spirit, and in the spirit he loved her.

With Maud he might look forward to union at some distant day, a union outwardly of the conventional kind.

It would be so, not on account of any inferiority to his ideal in Maud, for he felt that there was no height of his own thought whither she would not in time follow him; but simply because no point of principle would demand a refusal of the yoke of respectability, with its attendant social advantages.