Poor fellow! it was all he had. But
compassion itself can hardly urge that as a reason for accepting
it for genuine. What rubbish most girls will take for poetry, and
with it heap up impassably their door to the garden of delights!
what French polish they will take for refinement! what merest
French gallantry for love! what French sentiment for passion!
what commonest passion they will take for devotion!--passion that
has little to do with their beauty even, still less with the
individuality of it, and nothing at all with their loveliness!
In justice to Tom, I must add, however, that he also took not a
little rubbish for poetry, much sentiment for pathos, and all
passion for love. He was no intentional deceiver; he was so self-
deceived, that, being himself a deception, he could be nothing
but a deceiver--at once the most complete and the most
pardonable, and perhaps the most dangerous of deceivers.
With all his fine talk of love, to which he now gave full flow,
it was characteristic of him that, although he saw Letty without
hat or cloak, just because he was himself warmly clad, he never
thought of her being cold, until the arm he had thrown round her
waist felt her shiver. Thereupon he was kind, and would have
insisted that she should go in and get a shawl, had she not
positively refused to go in and come out again. Then he would
have had her put on his coat, that she might be able to stay a
little longer; but she prevailed on him to let her go.
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