Therefore to him Isobel was everything.

As a child he had adored her; as a woman she was his desire, his faith and his worship.
If this were so with him, still more was it the case with Isobel, who in truth cared for no other human being.

Something in her nature prevented her from contracting violent female friendships, and to all men, except a few of ability, each of them old enough to be her father, she was totally indifferent; indeed most of them repelled her.

On Godfrey, and Godfrey alone, from the first moment she saw him as a child she had poured all the deep treasure of her heart.

He was at once her divinity and her other self, the segment that completed her life's circle, without which it was nothing but a useless, broken ring.
So much did this seem to her to be so, that notwithstanding her lack of faith in matters beyond proof and knowledge, she never conceived of this passion of hers as having had a beginning, or of being capable of an end.