Of course his knowledge and trained faculties far surpassed Sophie's simple acquirements and modest learning; but she had a marvelous penetration in seeing a fallacy, even when she knew not how to expose it; and she mercilessly pricked many of the conceited bubbles of his understanding.
Doubtless she would have noticed the too prominent position which she had come to occupy in the invalid's horizon, had not her eyes, so clear to see every thing else, been blinded by the fact that he, also, was grown to be of altogether too much importance to her.

She never for a moment imagined that any thing but an abstract and ideal scheme for benefiting Bressant was actuating her in her intercourse with him.

She proposed to educate him in pure beliefs and true aspirations; to show him that there was more in life than can be mathematically proved.

But that she could derive other than an immaterial and impersonal enjoyment from it--oh, no! This was quixotic and unpractical, if nothing worse.

What other means of imparting spiritual knowledge could a young girl like Sophie have, than to exhibit to her pupil the structure and workings of her own soul?
But this could not be done with impunity; neither was Bressant a cup, to be emptied and then refilled with a purer substance.