And may not some fair and fresh reward be justly claimed as
the crown of a virtuous career?
I say all this, yet my real feeling is as if I were bald as Dr. Galliot
and jealous as General Althorpe. For, with my thorough knowledge of
myself, I, were I like either one of them, should not have offered myself
to the mercy of a young woman, or of the world. Nor, as I am and know
myself to be, would I offer myself to the mercy of Alice Amble. When my
filleule first drove into Dayton she had some singularly audacious ideas
of her own. Those vivid young feminine perceptions and untamed
imaginations are desperate things to encounter. There is nothing beyond
their reach. Our safety from them lies in the fact that they are always
seeing too much, and imagining too wildly; so that, with a little help
from us, they may be taught to distrust themselves; and when they have
once distrusted themselves, we need not afterwards fear them: their
supernatural vitality has vanished. I fancy my pretty Alice to be in this
state now.
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