Her clear, serene outlook was
attuned to the plain and the practical; she would discover a thousand
drawbacks to his scheme, but nary a one of the incorporeal benefits he
dreamed of reaping from it. There was his handling of money for one
thing: she had come, he was aware, to regard him as incurably
extravagant; and it would be no easy task to convince her that he could
learn again to fit his expenses to a light purse. She had a woman's
instinctive distrust, too, of leaving the beaten track. Another point
made him still more dubious. Mary's whole heart and happiness were bound
up in this place where she had spent the flower-years of her life: who
knew if she would thrive as well on other soil? He found it intolerable
to think that she might have to pay for his want of stability.--Yes,
reduced to its essentials, it came to mean the pitting of one soul's
welfare against that of another; was a toss-up between his happiness and
hers. One of them would have to yield. Who would suffer more by doing so
--he or she? He believed that a sacrifice on his part would make the
wreck of his life complete. On hers--well, thanks to her doughty habit
of finding good everywhere, there was a chance of her coming out
unscathed.
Here was his case in a nutshell.
Still he did not tackle Mary. For sometimes, after all, a disturbed
doubt crept upon him whether it would not be possible to go on as he
was; instead of, as she would drastically word it, cutting his throat
with his own hand.
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