Among the many dissatisfactions and bitternesses of life, it shone forth with a steady light of purity and sweetness, as a thing unspoiled, unbreathed on, even, by what is ignoble or base.

And not the surface of it alone was thus free from all breath of defilement.

It showed clear right through, as some gem of the purest water.

To keep it thus inviolate, he had made sacrifices in the past neither easy nor inconsiderable to a man of his temperament and ambitions.

Hence that its perfection should be now endangered was to him the more exquisitely hateful.
Upon the altar of that hatred, promptly without scruple he sacrificed the wretched Theresa.