But it was a love born of that rare pity which is not akin to contempt because rooted in an overwhelmingly strong capacity for tenderness--the tenderness of the fiery kind--the tenderness of silent solitary men, the voluntary, passionate outcasts of their kind.

At the time I am forced to think that his vanity must have been enormous.
"What big eyes she has," he said to himself amazed.

No wonder.

She was staring at him with all the might of her soul awakening slowly from a poisoned sleep, in which it could only quiver with pain but could neither expand nor move.

He plunged into them breathless and tense, deep, deep, like a mad sailor taking a desperate dive from the masthead into the blue unfathomable sea so many men have execrated and loved at the same time.
And his vanity was immense.