Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/299

  time risen solely through his merits. The wife and their two children were living in Singapore.

"There were qualities in the romance, Doctor, which raised it to a plane higher than most similar affairs. Ten years of poverty had brought them no regrets, and this alone seemed to me sufficient to warrant the breach of etiquette; then, the former husband was a rake, or, what is far worse, an ex-rake. Also, the love of this man and woman had grown and deepened and gathered volume until, and this I gathered from what Dalton did not tell me, the love itself contained in him had raised the nature of this man to a sublime height, where it would almost seem that he had undergone an apotheosis; this perfect love which had begun so imperfectly had matured this creature, who was the result of generations of highly bred and highly cultured ancestors, until the man was an Olympian, Doctor, a demi-god, or I am no judge of men.

"Before long I left him, soothed as much [ 283 ]