"She is much changed; sorrow and sickness--for she, too, has had the fever,
and, alas! less resignation or peace within, than those who love her
would have wished to see--have worn her down. Little remains now of that
loveliness--"
"Which I idolized in my folly!"
"Thank God, thank God! that you see that at last: I knew it all along. I
knew that there was nothing there for your heart to rest upon--nothing
to satisfy your intellect--and, therefore, I tried to turn you from your
dream. I did it harshly, angrily, too sharply, yet not explicitly enough. I
ought to have made allowances for you. I should have known how enchanting,
intoxicating, mere outward perfections must have been to one of your
perceptions, shut out so long as you had been from the beautiful in art and
nature. But I was cruel. Alas! I had not then learnt to sympathize; and I
have often since felt with terror that I, too, may have many of your sins
to answer for; that I, even I, helped to drive you on to bitterness and
despair."
"Oh, do not say so! You have done to me, meant to me, nothing but good.
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