Nevertheless, Anne’s lover did not feel his love materially lessened by this conviction. He gnashed his teeth at it, thinking, ‘Had I but been there!’ though he knew very well that, had he been there, he could have done nothing to change it. But one thing he could do: when she was his wife he could put a stop to such follies. There should be none of this ridiculous magnanimity, this still more ridiculous indifference, then. In writing to her he had felt that it was difficult to keep all vestige of his disapproval out of his letters, but he had managed pretty nearly to do so: feeling wisely that it was useless to preach to her on such a subject, that only his own constant guidance and example, or, better still, his personal conduct of her affairs, could bring real good sense into them. He had been anxious enough while this was going on, not seeing what was to come, feeling only certain that, love as he might, he could no more marry his love without a penny than he could make himself Lord Chief Justice. It was out of the question: in his position marriage was difficult in the best of circumstances; but to marry a wife without a fortune of her own, without enough to keep her comfortable, was simply folly not to be thought of. Anne’s dreams of romantic toil, of the enthusiasm of hard work into which a man might rush for the sake of a woman he loved, and of the heroic life the two could lead, helping each other on to fame and fortune at the end, were to him as silly as a nursery tale. Men who made their own way like that, overcoming every obstacle and forcing their way to the heights of ambition, were men who did it by temperament, not by love, or for any sentimental motive. Cosmo knew that he was not the sort of man to venture on such a madness. His wife must have enough to provide for her own comfort, to keep her as she had been accustomed to be kept, or else he could have no wife at all.