United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Having realized his mistake, he did not seek to flinch from the bitter
truth. He saw clearly that their future relations toward each other must
be largely formal; that tender comradeship and mutual soul alliance were
at an end. At the same time his simple, direct conscience promptly
indicated to him that it was his duty to recognize Selma's point of view
and endeavor to satisfy it as far as he could without sacrifice of his
own principles. He chose to remember that she, too, had made a mistake,
and that he was not the kind of husband whom she desired; that his
tastes were not her tastes, nor his ambitions her's; that she had tastes
and ambitions of her own which he, as the man to whom she was bound by
the law, must not disregard. Thus reasoning, he resolved to carry out
the scheme of life which she appeared to despise, but also to work hard
to provide her with the means to fulfil her own aims. She craved money
for social advancement. She should have it from him, for there was no
other source from which she could obtain it. The poignancy of his own
sorrow should not cause him to ignore that she had given up her own
career and pursuits in order to become his wife, and was now
disappointed and without independent resources. His pride was sorely
wounded, his ideals shattered and his heart crushed; yet, though he
could not forbear from judging Selma, and was unconscious of having
failed in his obligations to her as a husband and a man, he saw what she
called her side, and he took up the thread of life again under the spur
of an intention to give her everything but love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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