"You forget," he said, "that while I might find it easy to love her" (which he did not believe), "she might not find it easy to love me."
"You need have no fear." She was about to add that Paula would love anybody that loved her, but remembered in time that this might not be regarded as a recommendation. "She is the best creature I ever knew—almost perfect."
"I believe she is," he assented with a sigh, which was a tribute to Paula's perfection. "I fear she is too good for me."
"That's a strange objection."
"I am not so sure," he replied, as he lit a cigar, preparatory to leaving the room. But when he was gone, Mrs. Joe felt that he would consider the matter, and was content.
Unconsciously to herself, and, perhaps, without the knowledge of those by whom she was surrounded, Paula was somewhat harshly treated by nature; and that, notwithstanding her beauty. She was the embodiment of purity, of affection, of all the sweeter virtues, hence, regarded as wanting in those weaknesses which are essential to the symmetry of strength; one who lacks the everyday vices of temper, of selfishness, of jealousy, is, in some degree, abhorrent to our sense of the fitness of things. It is not that we envy the possessor of all the virtues—on the contrary, total absence of vice awakens something akin to contempt—but we are impatient of a non-combative disposition. The ideal Christian, offering the unsmitten cheek, presents a spectacle which, on Sundays, we characterize as sublime; the actual Christian, making such a tender, is, on any day, an object of scorn. Even of Paula, they who knew her would have admitted that it was possible to rouse her to resentment, possibly to a deed of vengeance, just as the worm may be made to turn; but, then, humanity refuses to admire worms in any attitude.
As Mark prosecuted the study of Paula, it gradually dawned upon him that it was interesting. From wondering whether there could be "much in her," he attained the conviction that, whether much or little, what there was was beyond his ken. "Paula," he asked one day, "are you as good as you look?"
"I don't know how good I look, Mark."
"Saintlike."
"Then I am not as good as I look; only I don't think I look as you say."