Oh, Mr. Thornton, I am not good enough!’
‘Not good enough! Don’t mock my own deep feeling of unworthiness.
I’ll not listen to reason… reason always means what someone else has got to say.
I wanted to see the place where Margaret grew to what she is, even at the worst time of all, when I had no hope of ever calling her mine.
He shrank from hearing Margaret’s very name mentioned; he, while he blamed her – while he was jealous of her – while he renounced her – he loved her sorely, in spite of himself.
There was a filmy veil of soft dull mist obscuring, but not hiding, all objects, giving them a lilac hue, for the sun had not yet fully set; a robin was singing … The leaves were more gorgeous than ever; the first touch of frost would lay them all low to the ground. Already one or two kept constantly floating down, amber and golden in the low slanting sun-rays.
Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine; but it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly used–not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others more helpless.