me to many good things. She has
done that already.

"Oh, well then, I suppose it's all right."

Though he said it was all right he knew that it was all wrong; that
she was all wrong too. He wondered again how it was that he had never
noticed it before. It seemed to him now that he must always have seen
it, and that he had struggled not to see it, as he was struggling now.

Struggle as he would, he knew that he was only putting off the
inevitable surrender. Putting off the moment that must face him yet,
at some turning of the stair or opening of a door, as they went from
room to room of the house that, empty, had once seemed to him
desirable, and now, littered with the solid irrevocable results of
Flossie's furnishing, inspired him with detestation and despair. How
could he ever live in it? He and his dream, the dream that Lucia had
told him was divorced from reality? She had told him too that his
trouble all lay there, and he remembered that then as now she had
advised a reconciliation. But better a divorce than reconciliation
with any of the realities that faced him now. Better even illusion
than these infallible perceptions. Better to be decently, charitably
blind where women are concerned, than to see them so; to see poor
Flossie as she was, a reality divorced from any dream.

A foolish train of thought that. As if he were only a dreamer. As if
it were a dream that had to do with it. As if his dream had not long
ago loved, followed, and embraced a divine reality. As if it had ever
fallen away after that one superb act of reconciliation.

He had done poor Flossie some injustice. She suffered in his eyes
because she came short, not of the dream, but of the reality. To be
placed beside Lucia Harden would have been a severe test for any
woman; but for Flossie it was cruelty itself. He had never subjected
her to that, not even in thought; for he felt that the comparison,
cruel to one woman, was profanation to the other. It was only feminine
Fate who could be so unkind as to put those two side by side, that he
might look well, and measure his love for Flossie by his love for
Lucia, seeing it too as it was. Maddox had not been far wrong there.
For anything spiritual in that emotion, he might as well have gone
back to Poppy Grace. Better; since between him and Flossie that gross
tie, once formed, could not be broken. Better; since there had at
least been no hypocrisy in his relations with the joyous Poppy. Better
anyth