Moreover,
several years of poetic study, and, if the truth must be told,
poetic efforts, had tended to develop the affective side of his
constitution still further, in proportion to his active faculties.
It was his belief in the absolute newness of blandishment to
Elfride which had constituted her primary charm. He began to
think it was as hard to be earliest in a woman's heart as it was
to be first in the Pool of Bethesda.
That Knight should have been thus constituted: that Elfride's
second lover should not have been one of the great mass of
bustling mankind, little given to introspection, whose good-nature
might have compensated for any lack of appreciativeness, was the
chance of things. That her throbbing, self-confounding,
indiscreet heart should have to defend itself unaided against the
keen scrutiny and logical power which Knight, now that his
suspicions were awakened, would sooner or later be sure to
exercise against her, was her misfortune. A miserable incongruity
was apparent in the circumstance of a strong mind practising its
unerring archery upon a heart which the owner of that mind loved
better than his own.
Elfride's docile devotion to Knight was now its own enemy.
Clinging to him so dependently, she taught him in time to presume
upon that devotion--a lesson men are not slow to learn. A slight
rebelliousness occasionally would have done him no harm, and would
have been a world of advantage to her.
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