Without realizing it, he had a tenderness for them which verged on contempt.
He loved Sylvia, but he never lost sight of the fact that she was a woman and he a man, and therefore it followed, as a matter of course, that she was by nature weaker and, because of the weakness, had a sweet inferiority.

It had never detracted from his love for her; it had increased it.

There might not have been any love in the beginning except for that.
Henry was perhaps scarcely capable of loving a woman whom he might be compelled to acknowledge as his superior.

This elderly New-Englander had in him none of the spirit of knight-errantry.

He had been a good, faithful husband to his wife, but he had never set her on a pedestal, but a trifle below him, and he had loved her there and been patient with her.
But patience must breed a certain sense of superiority.