The growth of higher feeling within
us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added
strength. We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than
a painter or a musician can wish to return to his cruder manner, or a
philosopher to his less complete formula.
Something like this sense of enlarged being was in Adam's mind this
Sunday morning, as he rode along in vivid recollection of the past. His
feeling towards Dinah, the hope of passing his life with her, had been
the distant unseen point towards which that hard journey from Snowfield
eighteen months ago had been leading him. Tender and deep as his love
for Hetty had been--so deep that the roots of it would never be torn
away--his love for Dinah was better and more precious to him, for it
was the outgrowth of that fuller life which had come to him from his
acquaintance with deep sorrow. "It's like as if it was a new strength to
me," he said to himself, "to love her and know as she loves me. I shall
look t' her to help me to see things right. For she's better than I
am--there's less o' self in her, and pride. And it's a feeling as gives
you a sort o' liberty, as if you could walk more fearless, when you've
more trust in another than y' have in yourself.
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