'If, dear Englishwoman, he were only that, he might be withstood.

But Alvan mounts high over such lovers: he is a wonderful and ideal man: so great, so generous, heroical, giant-like, that what he wills must be.' The Englishwoman was quick enough to seize an indication difficult to miss--more was expected to be said of him.
'You see the perfect gentleman in Dr.Alvan,' she remarked, for she had heard him ordering his morning bath at the hotel, and he had also been polite to her under vexation.
Clotilde nodded hurriedly; she saw something infinitely greater, and disliked the bringing of that island microscope to bear upon a giant.
She found it repugnant to hear a word of Alvan as a perfect gentleman.
Justly, however, she took him for a splendid nature, and assuming upon good authority that the greater contains the lesser, she supposed the lesser to be a chiselled figure serviceably alive in the embrace..