But, as this might have been a reason for coming to the opposite
conclusion, he followed out the theme again a little way in his mind; to
justify himself, perhaps.
'Suppose that a man,' so his thoughts ran, 'who had been of age some
twenty years or so; who was a diffident man, from the circumstances of
his youth; who was rather a grave man, from the tenor of his life; who
knew himself to be deficient in many little engaging qualities which
he admired in others, from having been long in a distant region, with
nothing softening near him; who had no kind sisters to present to her;
who had no congenial home to make her known in; who was a stranger in
the land; who had not a fortune to compensate, in any measure, for
these defects; who had nothing in his favour but his honest love and his
general wish to do right--suppose such a man were to come to this house,
and were to yield to the captivation of this charming girl, and were to
persuade himself that he could hope to win her; what a weakness it would
be!'
He softly opened his window, and looked out upon the serene river. Year
after year so much allowance for the drifting of the ferry-boat, so
many miles an hour the flowing of the stream, here the rushes, there the
lilies, nothing uncertain or unquiet. Why should he be vexed or sore at heart?
It was not his weakness that he
had imagined. It was nobody's, nobody's within his knowledge; why should
it trouble him? And yet it did trouble him. And he thought--who has not
thought for a moment, sometimes?--that it might be better to flow away
monotonously, like the river, and to compound for its insensibility to
happiness with its insensibility to pain.