"Only one thing could in reason have been urged against the arrangement,
that thing was his wife. She was a fragile, delicate girl, whom he had
married in obedience to that instinct of attraction towards the opposite
which Nature, for the purpose of maintaining her average, has implanted
in our breasts--a timid, meek-eyed creature, one of those women to whom
death is less terrible than danger, and fate easier to face than fear.
Such women have been known to run screaming from a mouse and to meet
martyrdom with heroism. They can no more keep their nerves from
trembling than an aspen tree can stay the quivering of its leaves.
"That she was totally unfitted for, and would be made wretched by the
life to which his acceptance of the post would condemn her might have
readily occurred to him, had he stopped to consider for a moment her
feelings in the matter. But to view a question from any other standpoint
than his own was not his habit. That he loved her passionately, in his
way, as a thing belonging to himself, there can be no doubt, but it was
with the love that such men have for the dog they will thrash, the horse
they will spur to a broken back. To consult her on the subject never
entered his head. He informed her one day of his decision and of the
date of their sailing, and, handing her a handsome cheque, told her to
purchase all things necessary to her, and to let him know if she needed
more; and she, loving him with a dog-like devotion that was not good for
him, opened her big eyes a little wider, but said nothing.
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