She coldly asked herself whether
she were mad, that she could have suffered thus for such a man, even ever
so briefly. He was a man, she said, who loved an unattainable, fanatic
idea in the first place, and who dearly loved himself as well for his own
fanaticism's sake. He was a man in whom the heart was crushed, even
annihilated, by his intellect, which he valued far too highly, and by his
vanity, which he dignified into a philosophy of self-sacrifice. He was
aiming at what no man can reach, and though he knew his object to be
beyond human grasp, he desired all possible credit for having madly
dreamed of anything so high. In the sudden revulsion of her strong
passion, she almost hated him, she almost felt the power to refute his
theories, to destroy his edifice of fantastic morality, and finally to
show him that he was a fool among men, and doubly a fool, because he was
not even happy in his own folly.
Joe vaguely felt all this, and with it she felt a sense of shame at having
so nearly broken down at the news that he was going away.
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