I am displaying all the shallowness, falseness, pettiness, all the mean, and cruel and callous character which must be truly my real self.

...

Only I shall not marry you! You are not to run the risk of what I might prove to be when I remember in bitterness all I have renounced.

If I married you I should remember, unreconciled, what you cost me.

Better for you and for me that I marry him, and let him bear with me when I remember that he cost me you!" She bent over, almost double, closing her eyes with small clenched hands; and he saw the ring shimmering in the sunshine, and her hair, heavily, densely gold, and the white nape of her neck, and the tiny close-set ears, and the curved softness of cheek and chin; every smooth, childlike contour and mould--rounded arms, slim, flowing lines of body and limb--all valued at many millions by her as her own appraiser.
Suddenly, deep within him, something seemed to fail, die out--perhaps a tiny newly lighted flame of unaccustomed purity, the dawning flicker of aspiration to better things.