She had but one word to say in self-defence, and the moment it was said she perceived that it amounted to self-accusation. She had fallen in love with his beauty: how could she not despond when she found that she was in love with it--like that--no longer? It had blinded her to all else: she had seen his vulgarities but dimly, if at all, even as she had seen his panoply of excellent qualities but dimly. Now she saw only the vulgarities, or at any rate she saw them right in the foreground, big and blinding; while behind, in the distance, so to speak, sat the rest of him. Was it not reasonable that her outlook, which must take its colour from the past, should be pessimistic? And then even that piece of self-defence was turned into self-accusation. If that was the case, the fault had been hers from the beginning. But that was what she had done; she had separated him, the man, into packets: she had fallen in love with one packet, and now she was spreading in front of her another that only irritated and almost disgusted her. She had yet to learn the true and the wider outlook, to feel that fire of love that fuses all things together, and loves though it can tenderly laugh, and is gentle always, and rejoices in the weaknesses and imperfections and faults of the beloved, simply because they are his. For though there are many ways of love, the spirit that animates them all is just that; they are all swayed by one magical tune. But that Dora did not yet know, she had not heard a note of it, she did not even know the region of the soul where it made melody all day long. All that she had learned in the last few minutes was that she had with considerable acuteness been spying out causes for complaint, excuses for dissatisfaction. She could do a little better than that.
By this time she had arrived at Uncle Alf’s and though the severe remarks of the Spectator had partially braced her again, after the rather sloppy abandonment of self-pity and dejection into which her introspection had brought her, it must be confessed that there was something about Uncle Alf, caustic and malicious though he was, that restored her more efficaciously. For out of all the weapons with which it is fair to fight the disappointments and despondencies that are incidental to human life, there is none sharper or more rapier-like in attack or defence than the sense of humour. And Uncle Alf was well equipped there: not even the picture dealer whom he habitually worsted would have denied that he had that. It was lambent and ill-natured; it twinkled and stung; but it had the enviable trick of perceiving what was ludicrous.