He believed she disliked
and even detested him, not so much on personal grounds as because
he represented to her mind a class of ideas and a self-restraint
that were hateful. Circumstances had associated her in his mind
with Sibley, who thus cast a baleful shadow athwart even her beauty
and made it repulsive. Indeed the mocking perfection of her features
irritated him, and he began to make a conscious and persistent effort
not to look toward her. He now regarded his hope to illumine her
face from within, by delicate touches of mind, thought, and motive,
as vain as an attempt to carve the Venus of Milo out of mottled
pumice-stone. Still he did not regret to-night the freak of fancy
that had brought him to the Lake House, since it had led to his
meeting a woman who was to him a new and beautiful revelation of
the rarest excellence and grace.
But there was no such compensating outlook for poor Ida. To her,
his coming promised daily to result in increasing wretchedness.
From the miserable Sunday night on which she had sobbed herself
to sleep, the consciousness had continually grown clearer that she
could never find in her old mode of life any satisfying pleasure.
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