He waited a moment longer and then
passed on, leaving her alone. He saw that she was half mad with anxiety,
and he neither trusted himself to speak, nor believed that speaking
could be of any use. He went down to the lower bastion, where he could
be alone, and for a long time he walked steadily up and down, trying
hard to think of nothing, and sometimes counting his steps as he walked,
in order to keep his mind from itself.
He did not idealize the woman he loved, for he was not a man of ideals,
nor of much imagination. Such defects as she might have, he did not
see, and if he had seen them he would have been indifferent to them. To
such a man, loving meant everything and admitted of no comment, because
there was no part of him left free to judge. He was a whole-souled man,
who asked no questions of himself and no advice of others. He had never
needed counsel, in his own opinion, and for the rest, what he felt was
himself and not a secondary, dual being of separate passions and
impressions which he could analyze and examine. He had never
comprehended that strange machine of nicely-balanced doubts and
certainties, forever in a state of half-morbid equilibrium between the
wish, the thought, and the deed--such a man as Pietro Ghisleri was, for
instance, who would refuse a beggar an alms lest the giving should be a
satisfaction to his own vanity, and then, perhaps, would turn back in
pity and give the poor wretch half a handful of silver.
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