Then he had retricked his beams, and before twelve months were passed had almost forgotten his love.

He knew now, or thought that he knew,--that the continued indulgence of a hopeless passion was a folly opposed to the very instincts of man and woman,--a weakness showing want of fibre and of muscle in the character.

But here was a woman who could calmly conceal her passion in its early days and marry a man whom she did not love in spite of it, who could make her heart, her feelings, and all her feminine delicacy subordinate to material considerations, and nevertheless could not rid herself of her passion in the course of years, although she felt its existence to be an intolerable burden on her conscience.

On which side lay strength of character and on which side weakness?
Was he strong or was she?
And he tried to examine his own feelings in regard to her.

The thing was so long ago that she was to him as some aunt, or sister, so much the elder as to be almost venerable.