He perceived the vanity of that hope now, and yet despairingly clung to it, because, if he surrendered it, he felt that he must confess himself, and from this he shrank as from a deed that would inflict a deeper degradation upon her, while Conway lived, than any she could suffer from her husband’s behaviour.
One must either entirely sympathise with his profound susceptibility of the obligation his supposed death had forced upon him to fulfil, or ridicule him as a man absurdly fantastical in his views of morality. There seems no middle standpoint to judge him from.
But unless there be too much austerity in his virtue to make it admirable, then, to properly appreciate it, we must remember the extraordinary tenderness of his nature, his exquisite sensibility, which shrank from the mere thought of tarnishing the pure honour of the woman he loved.
That he believed her honour would be tarnished were he to proclaim himself in the lifetime of her present husband, was enough; and whether he was right or wrong; whether he was correct in holding the obligations of the marriage-service holy, binding, and to be disturbed only at the risk of God’s wrath, when incurred with a spotless conscience, when entered upon in innocence and good faith; or whether he should have regarded the marriage-service as a mere civil convention which made his wife his property, claimable by him on the common ground of the law of priority, without reference to any action she might have committed in honest belief that he was dead; one thing we must allow him—an unparalleled quality of unselfishness, the existence of which, while it attested the sincerity of his views (since he had his heart’s deepest affections to lose and nothing to gain by retaining them), elevated his conduct to the highest point of heroism.
Nelly had never before found him unwilling to romp with her; when he raised his head she watched his face with a strange, wistful look, and putting her finger to his cheek, said:
“Why do ’oo cry?”
He forced a smile for answer, caressed her, and then placed her on the ground, thinking she was weary of sitting. But she climbed upon his knee again, and repeated her question with great earnestness:
“Why do ’oo cry?”