Her kindest sentiment towards him, he believed, was the cold respect,
mingled with fear and dislike, in which a sever but honest critic
is sometimes held; and as he recalled his course towards her he
now felt that she had little reason for even this degree of regard.
He had awakened her sleeping mind not to an atmosphere of kindness
and sympathy like that in which the beauty in the fabled castle
had revived, but to a biting frost of harsh criticism and unjust
suspicion. That there seemed, at the time, good reason for these
on his part did not make it any easier for her to bear them;
and in the fact that he had so misunderstood and wronged her, his
confidence in his own sagacity received the severest shock it had
ever experienced. He felt that he could never go forward in life
with his old assured tread and manner.
Moreover the kindness and respect which he now proposed to show
Ida were caused more by compunction and fear than by any warmer
and friendlier motive. He wished to make amends for his injustice,
to reassure the girl, to smooth over matters and extricate himself
from his fateful office of critic. This experimenting with human
souls for artistic purposes was a much more serious matter than
he could have imagined.
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