a
wife. He had acted with the greatest caution in no weak or superficial,
or haphazard, or fitful way. Nevertheless, the outlook was dismal. This
first step in decline from his ideal caused him much pain and
restlessness, and led him to think cynically of many doctrines to which,
in serene moments, he had unconditionally subscribed. He compared his
own case with Robert's. Robert, in his headstrong passion, had certainly
rattled up sleeping lions, heedless of all consequences, and in defiance
of every warning. He had now met, poor fellow, with an appalling
chastisement, but could any one pretend that he had not brought it, to a
great extent, upon himself? He (Reckage), however, had behaved, from
first to last, in an unexceptionable manner. He had studiously avoided
the one girl of whom he was inclined to be immoderately fond. It was
true that he had practised this restraint less in her interest than his
own. But this was because he feared--as every creature will fear by
instinct its mortal enemy--the power of an ardent attachment. His mind
had revolted in a panic at the thought of becoming dependent on a
woman's humours. The noblest of the sex were capricious, and far and
away the best course was to select a partner whose unavoidable nonsense
would leave one, merely from indifference, undisturbed. Sara de
Treverell, in the past, had been, by her vagaries, directly responsible
for several sleepless nights, and a sleepless night was one of the few
things he simply could not stand. Thoughts of her had seemed to unfit
him for his work, to weaken his nerves, to act, in various ways, to his
disadvantage. She had been exacting in her demands upon his nature. They
were not uttered demands, or demands which he could formulate, but he
had been conscious of them always. He had been obliged to pause and ask
himself at every thought, at every step--"What would Sara say to this?"
It was a tyranny--if not a species of witchcraft. And so he had
determined to see her no more. Following the usual, most correct method
in such procedures, he went abroad. After a week of irritating
meditations, furtive, all but unconquerable desires, after he had passed
the day on which it had been his custom for months to call upon her,
after he had learned how to discipline the hours he had used to spend
riding with her in the Row, he felt as a convalescent after some
exhausting malady--quiescent, dulled, possessed by a drowsy stupidity,
inaccessible to an