She had at last ceased to study the architecture, and was looking at him.
Perhaps his words had struck her, for it seemed at that moment as if he read in her bright eyes a genuine interest in him and his fortunes.
II.
Next day they went on to Baden.

De Stancy was beginning to cultivate the passion of love even more as an escape from the gloomy relations of his life than as matrimonial strategy.

Paula's juxtaposition had the attribute of making him forget everything in his own history.

She was a magic alterative; and the most foolish boyish shape into which he could throw his feelings for her was in this respect to be aimed at as the act of highest wisdom.
He supplemented the natural warmth of feeling that she had wrought in him by every artificial means in his power, to make the distraction the more complete.

He had not known anything like this self-obscuration for a dozen years, and when he conjectured that she might really learn to love him he felt exalted in his own eyes and purified from the dross of his former life.