Yet at times it had seemed to him that she would not have been ill-pleased if he had done one of these things, or all; that she wondered, indeed, that he did not, and thought none the better of him for his abstinence.

Moreover, now he learned that her father wondered also, and this was a strange reward of virtue.
For Peter loved Margaret with heart and soul and body.

Since he, a lad, had played with her, a child, he loved her, and no other woman.

She was his thought by day and his dream by night, his hope, his eternal star.
Heaven he pictured as a place where for ever he would be with Margaret, earth without her could be nothing but a hell.

That was why he had stayed on in Castell's shop, bending his proud neck to this tradesman's yoke, doing the bidding and taking the rough words of chapmen and of lordly customers, filling in bills of exchange, and cheapening bargains, all without a sign or murmur, though oftentimes he felt as though his gorge would burst with loathing of the life.