His better nature told him that it was impossible that she
should deceive him. He had read the very inside of her heart, and knew
that her only delight was in his love. He understood perfectly the
weakness and faith and beauty of her feminine nature, and her trusting,
leaning softness was to his harder spirit as water to a thirsting
man in the desert. When she clung to him, promising to obey him in
everything, the touch of her hands, and the sound of her voice, and the
beseeching glance of her loving eyes, were food and drink to him. He
knew that her presence refreshed him and cooled him--made him young
as he was growing old, and filled his mind with sweet thoughts which
hardly came to him but when she was with him. He had told himself over
and over again that it must be good for him to have such a one for his
wife, whether she were Jew or Christian. He knew himself to be a better
man when she was with him than at other moments of his life. And then
he loved her. He was thinking of her hourly, though his impatience to
see her was not as hers to be with him.
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