Moreover, in his changed mood he again began to chafe irritably at
Ida's associations. She herself had been thoroughly redeemed in
an artistic point of view, and it was his nature to look at things
in this light. While he shuddered at her terrible purpose he
recognized the high, strong spirit which in it perversion and wrong
had rendered the deed possible, and her dark design made a grand
and sombre background against which the maiden he had sketched that
morning was all the more luminous. Hitherto everything connected
with her change of character had been not only conventional, but
had appealed to his aesthetic temperament as singularly beautiful.
The quaint garden with its flowers, brook, and allegorical tree
were associations that harmonized with Ida's loveliness, while
Mr. Eltinge, who had rendered such an immeasurable service to them
both, realized his best ideal of dignified and venerable age.
But when he compared her spiritual father with the man she expected
that night, he found his whole nature becoming full of irritable
protest and dissatisfaction.
"This morning," he muttered, "she appeared capable of realizing a
poet's dreams, but already I see the hard and prosaic conditions
of her lot dwarfing her growth and throwing their grotesque shadows
across her beauty.
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