She wasn't indeed beautiful
to many people--these things are beyond explaining. She had manifest
defects of form and feature, and they didn't matter at all. Her
complexion was bad, but I don't think it would have mattered if it
had been positively unwholesome. I had extraordinarily limited,
extraordinarily painful, desires. I longed intolerably to kiss her lips.
V
The affair was immensely serious and commanding to me. I don't remember
that in these earlier phases I had any thought of turning back at
all. It was clear to me that she regarded me with an eye entirely
more critical than I had for her, that she didn't like my scholarly
untidiness, my want of even the most commonplace style. "Why do you
wear collars like that?" she said, and sent me in pursuit of gentlemanly
neckwear. I remember when she invited me a little abruptly one day to
come to tea at her home on the following Sunday and meet her father
and mother and aunt, that I immediately doubted whether my hitherto
unsuspected best clothes would create the impression she desired me to
make on her belongings.
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