Once more he looked upon woman as a young
man looks before he has had bitter experience of the world--as a being
to be venerated and almost worshipped, as something better, brighter,
purer than himself, hardly to be won, and when won to be worn like a
jewel prized at once for value and for beauty.
Now this is a dangerous state of mind for a man of three or four and
forty to fall into, because it is a soft state, and this is a world in
which the softest are apt to get the worst of it. At four and forty a
man, of course, should be hard enough to get the better of other
people, as indeed he generally is.
When Harold Quaritch, after that long interval, set his eyes again
upon Ida's face, he felt a curious change come over him. All the vague
ideas and more or less poetical aspirations which for five long years
had gathered themselves about that memory, took shape and form, and in
his heart he knew he loved her. Then as the days went on and he came
to know her better, he grew to love her more and more, till at last
his whole heart went out towards his late found treasure, and she
became more than life to him, more than aught else had been or could
be. Serene and happy were those days which they spent in painting and
talking as they wandered about the Honham Castle grounds.
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