Once he had wounded and startled her, and had despaired for awhile of undoing the impression made upon her.

But now he felt no quick anxiety, no fear how things might turn, only a settled flat consciousness of division, of a life that had once been near to his swept away from him for ever, of diverging roads which no kindly fate would ever join again.
For, by the end of this time of solitary waiting, his change of attitude was complete.

It was evident to him that his anticipation of her failure, potent as it had been over his life, had never been half so real, half so vivid, as this new and strange foreboding of her true success.

Marie must be right.

He had been a mere blind hair-splitting pedant, judging Isabel Bretherton by principles and standards which left out of count the inborn energy, the natural power of growth, of such a personality as hers.