The Autobiography of Christopher Kirkland

All my old affection for her, all my old respect for her sincerity, came back in a flood on my heart. The bitterness of the past was swept away; only its tenderness in the ideal remained. I forgot her high religious contempt for my lower moral nature, her doubt and disbelief, her reproach and opposition; and I saw her only in her own best form--faithful, enduring, real--one worthy of respect, and by her sex to be surrounded with that kind of protection which means honour and includes love.