He could understand that a man unable to marry should be reticent as to his feelings,--supposing him to have been weak enough to have succumbed to a passion which could only mar his own prospects.

He was frank enough in owning to himself that he had been thus weak.

The weakness had come upon himself early in life,--and was there, an established fact.

The girl was to him unlike any other girl;--or any man.

There was to him a sweetness in her companionship which he could not analyse.