What distressed me most—more even than my own folly—was the perplexing question, How can beauty and ugliness dwell so near?

it was a little broken and had a sort of cracked ring; at first, indeed, there seemed to be an unhealthy note in it; but there was in it also genuine deep passion, and youthfulness and strength and sweetness, and a sort of charmingly careless, mournful grief.