Certainly Klesmer seemed cruel, but his feeling was the reverse of cruel. Our speech, even when we are most single-minded, can never take its line absolutely from one impulse; but Klesmer's was, as far as possible, directed by compassion for poor Gwendolen's ignorant eagerness to enter on a course of which he saw all the miserable details with a definiteness which he could not if he would have conveyed to her mind.

Klesmer seemed cruel, but his feeling was the reverse of cruel. He was directed by compassion for poor Gwendolen, so ignorantly eager to enter on a course of which he saw all the miserable details.
