he should compel Isaura to forbid his visits and break off their familiar
intercourse. This would be fatal to the chance of yet winning her, and
would also be of serious disadvantage to his more worldly interests. Her
literary aid might become essential to the journal on which his fortunes
depended; and at all events, in her conversation, in her encouragement,
in her sympathy with the pains and joys of his career, he felt a support,
a comfort, nay, an inspiration. For the spontaneous gush of her fresh
thoughts and fancies served to recruit his own jaded ideas, and enlarge
his own stinted range of invention. No, he could not commit himself to
the risk of banishment from Isaura.

And mingled with meaner motives for discretion, there was one of which he
was but vaguely conscious, purer and nobler. In the society of this
girl, in whom whatever was strong and high in mental organisation became
so sweetened into feminine grace by gentleness of temper and kindliness
of disposition, Rameau felt himself a better man. The virgin-like
dignity with which she moved, so untainted by a breath of scandal, amid
salons in which the envy of virtues doubted sought to bring innocence
itself into doubt, warmed into a genuine reverence the cynicism of his
professed creed.

While with her, while under her chastening influence, he was sensible of
a poetry infused within him far more true to the Camoenae than all he had
elaborated into verse. In these moments he was ashamed of the vices he
had courted as distractions. He imagined that with her all his own, it
would be easy to reform.

No; to withdraw wholly from Isaura was to renounce his sole chance of
redemption.