She loved him in the way and to the
degree which her character, as the years had developed it, permitted her to
love. And this love, or rather admiring respect, was wholly based upon her
ideal of him, her belief in the honesty and intensity of his convictions.
While she did not share them, she had breadth enough to admire them and to
regard them as high removed above her own ideas to which for herself she
held tenaciously, instinct and association and "tradition" triumphing over
reason.
Howard retained his ideal of her, never examining her closely, never seeing
or suspecting what a pale love she gave him and how shrivelled had become
the part of her nature which she and he both assumed was most strongly
developed. He knew how she idealised him and did not dare to undeceive her.
Therefore he practised toward her a hypocrisy that grew steadily more
disgraceful, yet grew so gradually that there was no single moment at which
he could conveniently halt and "straighten the record." At first he was
often and heartily ashamed of himself; but by degrees this feeling deadened
into cynical insensibility and he was only ashamed to let her see him as he
really was. She had kept her self-respect. She esteemed self-respect at the
exalted valuation he had formerly put upon it.
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