What could they mean?
What had her paleness, her evident trouble and weakness meant, but that the inmost self of hers was his, was conquered; and that, but for the shadowy obstacle between them, all would be well?
As for the obstacle in itself, he did not admit its force for a moment.
No sane and practical man, least of all when that man happened to be Catherine Leyburn's lover, could regard it as a binding obligation upon her that she should sacrifice her own life and happiness to three persons, who were in no evident moral straits, no physical or pecuniary need, and who, as Rose incoherently put it, might very well be rather braced than injured by the withdrawal of her strong support.
But the obstacle of character--ah, there was a different matter! He realized with despair the brooding, scrupulous force of moral passion to which her lonely life, her antecedents, and her father's nature working in her had given so rare and marked a development.

No temper in the world is so little open to reason as the ascetic temper.

How many a lover and husband, how many a parent and friend, have realized to their pain, since history began, the overwhelming attraction which all the processes of self-annihilation have for a certain order of minds! Robert's heart sank before the memory of that frail, indomitable look, that aspect of sad yet immovable conviction with which she had bade him farewell.

And yet, surely--surely under the willingness of the spirit there had been a pitiful, a most womanly weakness of the flesh.

Surely, now memory reproduced the scene, she had been white--trembling: her hand had rested on the moss-grown wall beside her for support.