It is very hard
for the man himself to know; for the passion having in itself a
betterment, may deceive him as well as her. It might be well that a
woman asked herself whether moral laxity or genuine self-devotion was
the more persuasive in her to the sacrifice. If her best hope be to
restrain the man within certain bounds, she is not one to imagine
capable of any noble anxiety. God cares nothing about keeping a man
respectable; he will give his very self to make of him a true man. But
that needs God; a woman is not enough for it. This cannot be God's way
of saving bad men.
CHAPTER XV.
A SMALL FAILURE.
Vavasor at length found he must not continue to visit Hester so often,
while not ready to go further; and that, much as he was in
love--proportionately, that is, to his faculty for loving--he dare not
do. But for the unconventionality of the Raymounts he would have reached
the point long before. He began, therefore, to lessen the number, and
shorten the length of his appearances in Addison Square.
But so doing he became the more aware of the influence she had been
exercising upon him--found that he had come to feel differently about
certain things--that her opinion was a power on his consciousness.
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