It was my theory that she found me all she could understand me to be.

The maternal virtues of the outside were certainly mine; I put them on with care every morning and wore them with patience all day.

Dacres, I assured myself, must have allowed his preconception to lead him absurdly by the nose not to see that the girl was satisfied, that my impatience, my impotence, did not at all make her miserable.

Evidently, however, he had created our relations differently; evidently he had set himself to their amelioration.

There was portent in it; things seemed to be closing in.