A Woman's War by Warwick Deeping

No one in Roxton would have imagined that any shadow of dread darkened the windows of the house in Lombard Street. Even to his most intimate friends, James Murchison would have appeared as the one man least likely to be dominated by any inherited taint of body or mind. His face was the face of a man who had mastered his own passions, the mouth firm yet generous, the jaw powerful, the eyes and forehead suggesting the philosopher behind the virility of the man of action. He had built up a substantial reputation for himself in Roxton and the neighborhood. His professional honesty was unimpeachable, his skill as a surgeon a matter of common gossip. But it was his warm-heartedness, the sincerity of his sympathy, his wholesome Saxon manliness that had won him popularity, especially among the poor.

For Catherine the uncovering of the past had come as a second awakening, a resanctification of her love. Women are the born champions of hero worship, and to generous natures imperfections are but as flints scattered in the warm earth of life. Women will gather them and hide them in their bosoms, breathing a more passionate tenderness perhaps, and betraying nothing to the outer world.