God knows I'm glad, Ellen.

I dare say it is better for you than if--" He stopped then and seemed all at once to see projected on his mirror of the future this dainty, exquisite girl, with her fine intellect, dragging about a poor house, with wailing children in arm and at heel, and suddenly a great courage of renunciation came over him.
"It _is_ better, Ellen," he said, in a loud voice, like a hero's, as if he were cheering his own better impulses on to victory over his own passions.

"It is better for a girl like you, than to--" Ellen knew that he meant to say, "to marry a fellow like me." Ellen looked at him, the sturdy backward fling of his head and shoulders, and the honest regard of his pained yet unflinching eyes, and a great weakness of natural longing for that which she was even now deprecating nearly overswept her.

She was nearer loving him that moment than ever before.

She realized something in him which could command love--the renunciation of love for love's sake.
"I shall never forget my old friends, whatever happens," she said, in a trembling voice, and it might have all been different had they not then arrived at Cynthia Lennox's.
"Shall I wait and go home with you, Ellen ?" Granville asked, timidly.
"No, thank you.