She's really not so plain, after all.

I've seen many women who were worse looking than she is." Unknown to him, an illusion was gradually shedding colour and warmth on his vision of her.

Mentally, he had endowed her with all the sober and saner virtues to which his present mood was committed--though he had, in reality, no better reason for so doing than the fact that she evidently esteemed him and that she was deserving of pity.

The discordant forces of passion no longer disturbed the calm and orderly processes of his mind, and he told himself that he saw clearly, because he saw stark images of facts, stripped not only of the glamour of light and shade, but even of the body of flesh and blood.

Life spread before him like a geometrical figure, constructed of perfect circles and absolutely conformable to the rules and the principles of mathematics.