Here was the truth; but the
truth was what she had struggled so hard to deny and feared so terribly
to find true. He was not indeed led by a sense of obligation towards her;
the need was for himself. It was not that he felt in her a right to call
on him for exertions or for a performance of his side of the bargain; it
was that he could not bear to lose his tribute from her. But still she
stood self-condemned. Again the thought came--with a woman who loved him
there might have been another tribute that she could have paid and he
been content to levy. He would have believed such a woman if she told him
that he would be as much to her, and she as much absorbed in him, in the
villa at Torquay as ever in the great world; and perhaps--oh, only
perhaps, it is true--he would have made shift with that and fed his
appetite on the homage of one, since his wretched body denied him the
rows on rows of applauding spectators that he loved. But from his wife's
lips he would not accept any such assurance, and from her no such homage
could be hoped for to solace him.
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