between our natures. As it was, he became in a few weeks an object of
intense hatred to me; and when he entered the room, still more when he
spoke, it was as if a sensation of grating metal had set my teeth on
edge. My diseased consciousness was more intensely and continually
occupied with his thoughts and emotions, than with those of any other
person who came in my way. I was perpetually exasperated with the petty
promptings of his conceit and his love of patronage, with his
self-complacent belief in Bertha Grant's passion for him, with his half-
pitying contempt for me--seen not in the ordinary indications of
intonation and phrase and slight action, which an acute and suspicious
mind is on the watch for, but in all their naked skinless complication.

For we were rivals, and our desires clashed, though he was not aware of
it. I have said nothing yet of the effect Bertha Grant produced in me on
a nearer acquaintance. That effect was chiefly determined by the fact
that she made the only exception, among all the human beings about me, to
my unhappy gift of insight. About Bertha I was always in a state of
uncertainty: I could watch the expression of her face, and speculate on
its meaning; I could ask for her opinion with the real interest of
ignorance; I could listen for her words and watch for her smile with hope
and fear: she had for me the fascination of an unravelled destiny. I say
it was this fact that chiefly determined the strong effect she produced
on me: for, in the abstract, no womanly character could seem to have less
affinity for that of a shrinking, romantic, passionate youth than
Bertha's. She was keen, sarcastic, unimaginative, prematurely cynical,
remaining critical and unmoved in the most impressive scenes, inclined to
dissect all my favourite poems, and especially contemptous towards the
German lyrics which were my pet literature at that time. To this moment
I am unable to define my feeling towards her: it was not ordinary boyish
admiration, for she was the very opposite, even to the colour of her