The heart, that doth but crave
More, having fed; the diamond,
Skilled to make base seem brave;
The club, for smiting in the dark
The spade, to dig a grave.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
The one supreme moment of complete and abject weakness was soon past; it had gone by in solitude. No one saw the fall of the defiant reprobate brought to the dust by the intensity of his grief. No one but God and triumphant Love.
Within a few minutes Michael had gathered together his scattered senses. What avail were tears and the bitter joys of lingering memories when there was still so much to do? Of a truth, Rose Marie's firm attitude of loyalty towards her rightful husband had not so much astonished Michael, for to a man who loves, the adored one necessarily possesses every virtue that ever adorned the halo of a saint; but he did not know that she loved her husband, and the warmth of her defence of the absent one had, in Michael's ears, sounded like the expression of her love. He did not stop to reason, to visualize the fact that Rose Marie did not know Stowmaries, that the passion in her voice had the ring of tragic despair in it, coupled with the sublime ardour of heroic self-sacrifice.
A man in love never stops to reason. Passion and the dormant seeds of ever-present jealousy still the powers of common sense.