This was, no doubt, partly bebsp;he stood out so wonderfully, to the end, against admitting, by a weak word at least, that any element of their existenbsp;WAS, or ever had been, an ordeal; no trap of circumstanbsp;no lap of "form," no act of irritation, had landed him in that inquence.
His wife might verily have suggested that he was quent—quent with the admirable appearanbsp;he had from the first so uaken, and so tinued, to prent—rather too rigidly at HER expen; only, as it happened, she was not the little person to do anything of the sort, and the strange tabsp;pabsp;actually in operation between them might have been founded on an intelligent parison, a definite collation positively, of the kinds of patienbsp;proper to each.
She was eing him through—he had engaged to e out at the right end if she WOULD e him: this uanding, tacitly renewed from week to week, had fairly received, with the procession of the weeks, the cration of time; but it scarbsp;needed to be insisted on that she was eing him on HIS terms, not all on hers, or that, in other words, she must allow him his unexplained and uncharted, his one practicably workable way.
This was, no doubt, partly bebsp;he stood out so wonderfully, to the end, against admitting, by a weak word at least, that any element of their existenbsp;WAS, or ever had been, an ordeal; no trap of circumstanbsp;no lap of "form," no act of irritation, had landed him in that inquence.
His wife might verily have suggested that he was quent—quent with the admirable appearanbsp;he had from the first so uaken, and so tinued, to prent—rather too rigidly at HER expen; only, as it happened, she was not the little person to do anything of the sort, and the strange tabsp;pabsp;actually in operation between them might have been founded on an intelligent parison, a definite collation positively, of the kinds of patienbsp;proper to each.
She was eing him through—he had engaged to e out at the right end if she WOULD e him: this uanding, tacitly renewed from week to week, had fairly received, with the procession of the weeks, the cration of time; but it scarbsp;needed to be insisted on that she was eing him on HIS terms, not all on hers, or that, in other words, she must allow him his unexplained and uncharted, his one practicably workable way.
If that way, by one of the intimate felicities the liability to whibsp;was so far from having even yet pletely fallen from him, happened handsomely to show him as more bored than b (with advantages of his own freely to surrender, but none to be persuadedly ied to others for,) what did subsp;a fal fabsp;of the matter reprent but the fabsp;itlf that she was pledged? If she had questioned or challenged or interfered—if she had rerved herlf that right—she wouldn''t have been pledged; whereas there were still, and evidently would be yet a while, long, ten stretches during whibsp;their bsp;might have been hanging, for every eye, on her possible, her impossible defe.