Of sympathy, the divine συμ, παθος, the suffering with, he had not the vaguest conception: of its faint and poor reflections, pity and mercy, he had but a dim idea.
He stuck as well as he could to what he thought was the right path, and as to the feelings of others, he could not be blamed for not considering them, for he had never practically realized that they had any.
In the present circumstances he had a few, fine, adamantine rules for conduct, which he was going to steadfastly apply, and he thought no more of the girl's feelings under them than one thinks of the inanimate parcel one is cording with what one knows is good, stout string.
In his eyes it was distinctly dishonourable for a man to engage a girl to himself without a reasonably near prospect of marriage.
It was also decidedly ungentlemanly to propose to a girl if she had money and you had none. Moreover, it was extremely selfish to remove a girl from a comfortable position to a poorer one, though she might positively swear she preferred it; and lastly, it was unwise for various reasons, to be too amiable to the girl, or to give any but the dimmest clue to your own feelings.
There was no telling—your feelings might change even—when you have to wait so long—and then it was much better, for the girl, that she should not be tied to you.
To visit the girl frequently, to hang about her to the amusement of onlookers, to keep alive her passion by look and hint and innuendo, to excite her by advances when he was in the humour, and studiously repulse her when she made any, to act almost as if he were her fiancé, and curtly resent it if she ever assumed he was more than an ordinary friend—this line of action he saw no fault in. The above were his views, and they were excellent, and if the girl didn't understand them she might do the other thing.
Some weeks passed, and the man and the girl saw each other constantly—three or four times in the week, perhaps more; and the inward irritation grew intense, while their outward relations remained unchanged.
There was a certain brutality that crept into the man's tones occasionally when he addressed her, a certain savage irritability in manner, that told the girl's keen intelligence something; some involuntary sighs of hers as she sat near him, and an increasing look of exhaustion on her face, that told him something. But that was all.
There were no tender passages between them; none of the conventional English flirting—matters were too serious, and the nature of each too violent to permit of that. A little bitter, more or less hostile, conversation passed between them on the most trifling subjects in his long afternoon calls. A little music would be attempted—that is, he would sing song after song, while she accompanied him, but a song was rarely completed. Generally, before or at the middle, he would seize the music in a gust of irrepressible and barely-veiled irritability, and fling it on the piano—yet they attempted the music with unwavering persistence, and both rose to go to the instrument with mutual alacrity.