Such an one is dedicated, birth upwards, to the Mater Dolorosa.
He had something nearer akin to affection for her than he had ever had in
his life for anything, but he was never in love with her--no more in
love with her than with the moss-rosebuds that she fastened in his
breast. Yet he played with her, because she was such a little, soft,
tempting female thing; and because, to see her face flush, and her heart
heave, to feel her fresh feelings stir into life, and to watch her
changes from shyness to confidence, and from frankness again into fear,
was a natural pastime in the lazy golden weather.
That he spared her as far as he did,--when after all she would have
married Jeannot anyhow,--and that he sketched her face in the open air,
and never entered her hut and never beguiled her to his own old palace in
the city, was a new virtue in himself for which he hardly knew whether to
feel respect or ridicule; anyway, it seemed virtue to him.
So long as he did not seduce the body, it seemed to him that it could
never matter how he slew the soul,--the little, honest, happy, pure,
frank soul, that amidst its poverty and hardships was like a robin's song
to the winter sun.
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