n untuned
by illness. While he was more open to the influx of all these novel
ideas and problems, he was less able to deal with and dispose of them.
So the professor, while encouraged by the observation of his apparent
progress in the direction of human feeling and emotional warmth, was
concerned to find him falling off in recuperative power.

Sophie was largely to blame for it. Bressant was getting to depend too
much upon her society. He brightened when she came in, and was gloomy
when she went out. He liked to talk and argue with her; to dash waves
of logic, impetuous but subtle, against the rock of her pure intuitions
and steady consistency. He was careful not to go too far; though,
indeed, she usually had the best of the encounter. Of course his
knowledge and trained faculties far surpassed Sophie's simple
acquirements and modest learning; but she had a marvelous penetration in
seeing a fallacy, even when she knew not how to expose it; and she
mercilessly pricked many of the conceited bubbles of his understanding.

Doubtless she would have noticed the too prominent position which she
had come to occupy in the invalid's horizon, had not her eyes, so clear
to see every thing else, been blinded by the fact that he, also, was
grown to be of altogether too much importance to her. She never for a
moment imagined that any thing but an abstract and ideal scheme for
benefiting Bressant was actuating her in her intercourse with him. She
proposed to educate him in pure beliefs and true aspirations; to show
him that there was more in life than can be mathematically proved. But
that she could derive other than an immaterial and impersonal enjoyment
from it--oh, no!

This was quixotic and unpractical, if nothing worse. What other means of
imparting spiritual knowledge could a young girl like Sophie have, than
to exhibit to her pupil the structure and workings of her own soul? But
this could not be done with impunity; neither was Bressant a cup, to be
emptied and then refilled with a purer substance. Young men and women
with exalted and ideal views about each other, cannot do better than to
keep out of one another's way. Unless they are prepared to mingle a
great deal of what is earthly with their dreams, they will be apt,
sooner or later, to have a rude awakening.

The conceit of her ideal crusade against Bressant's shortcomings blinded
Sophie to what she could not otherwise have helped seeing--that she
enjoyed his companions