Nancy if her reason
were ever sufficiently restored to let her appreciate the meaning of the
Anglican marriage service. But it is probable that her reason will
never be sufficiently restored to let her appreciate the meaning of the
Anglican marriage service. Therefore I cannot marry her, according to
the law of the land.

So here I am very much where I started thirteen years ago. I am the
attendant, not the husband, of a beautiful girl, who pays no attention
to me. I am estranged from Leonora, who married Rodney Bayham in my
absence and went to live at Bayham. Leonora rather dislikes me, because
she has got it into her head that I disapprove of her marriage with
Rodney Bayham. Well, I disapprove of her marriage. Possibly I am
jealous. Yes, no doubt I am jealous. In my fainter sort of way I seem to
perceive myself following the lines of Edward Ashburnham. I suppose that
I should really like to be a polygamist; with Nancy, and with Leonora,
and with Maisie Maidan and possibly even with Florence. I am no doubt
like every other man; only, probably because of my American origin I am
fainter. At the same time I am able to assure you that I am a strictly
respectable person. I have never done anything that the most anxious
mother of a daughter or the most careful dean of a cathedral would
object to. I have only followed, faintly, and in my unconscious desires,
Edward Ashburnham. Well, it is all over. Not one of us has got what he
really wanted. Leonora wanted Edward, and she has got Rodney Bayham, a
pleasant enough sort of sheep. Florence wanted Branshaw, and it is I
who have bought it from Leonora. I didn't really want it; what I
wanted mostly was to cease being a nurse-attendant. Well, I am a
nurse-attendant. Edward wanted Nancy Rufford, and I have got her. Only
she is mad. It is a queer and fantastic world. Why can't people have
what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet
everybody has the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it;
it is beyond me.

Is there any terrestial paradise where, amidst the whispering of the
olive-leaves, people can be with whom they like and have what they like
and take their ease in shadows and in coolness? Or are all men's lives
like the lives of us good people--like the lives of the Ashburnhams,
of the Dowells, of the Ruffords--broken, tumultuous, agonized, and
unromantic, lives, periods punctuated by screams, by imbecilities, by
deaths, by agonies? Who the d