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It is not for us to analyze the passion and say whether it was a worthy
one. It absorbed his whole nature and made him wretched enough. If he
deserved punishment, what more would you have? Perhaps this love was
kindling a new heroism in him.
He saw the road on which Laura was going clearly enough, though he did
not believe the worst he heard of her. He loved her too passionately to
credit that for a moment. And it seemed to him that if he could compel
her to recognize her position, and his own devotion, she might love him,
and that he could save her. His love was so far ennobled, and become a
very different thing from its beginning in Hawkeye. Whether he ever
thought that if he could save her from ruin, he could give her up
himself, is doubtful. Such a pitch of virtue does not occur often in
real life, especially in such natures as Harry's, whose generosity and
unselfishness were matters of temperament rather than habits or
principles.
He wrote a long letter to Laura, an incoherent, passionate letter,
pouring out his love as he could not do in her presence, and warning her
as plainly as he dared of the dangers that surrounded her, and the risks
she ran of compromising herself in many ways.
Laura read the letter, with a little sigh may be, as she thought of other
days, but with contempt also, and she put it into the fire with the
thought, "They are all alike."
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