to possess or even to taste, contempt will do it. When we know that the
weaver of the fascinations is purchasable, we toss her to the market
where men buy; and we walk released from vile subjection to one of the
female heap: subjection no longer, doubtless, and yet a stain of the past
flush, often colouring our reveries, creating active phantasms of a
passion absolutely extinct, if it ever was the veritable passion.

The plot--formless plot--to get release by the sacrifice or at least a
crucial temptation of the woman, that should wash his blood clean of her
image, had a shade of the devilish, he acknowledged; and the apology
offered no improvement of its aspect. She might come out of the trial
triumphant. And benefit for himself, even a small privilege, even the
pressure of her hand, he not only shrank from the thought of winning,-he
loathed the thought. He was too delicate over the idea of the married
woman whom he fancied he loved in her maidenhood. Others might press her
hand, lead her the dance: he simply wanted his release. She had set him
on fire; he conceived a method for trampling the remaining sparks and
erasing stain and scars; that was all. Henrietta rejected her wealthy
suitor: she might some day hence be seen crawling abjectly to wealth,
glad of a drink from the cup it holds, intoxicated with the draught. An
injured pride could animate his wealth to crave solace of such a
spectacle.

Devilish, if you like. He had expiated the wickedness in Cistercian
seclusion. His wife now drove him to sin again.

She had given him a son. That fluted of home and honourable life. She had
her charm, known to him alone.

But how, supposing she did not rub him to bristle with fresh irritations,
how go to his wife while Henrietta held her throne? Consideration was due
to her until she stumbled. Enough if she wavered. Almost enough is she
stood firm as a statue in the winds, and proved that the first page of
her was a false introduction. The surprising apparition of a beautiful
woman with character; a lightly-thrilled, pleasure-loving woman devoted
to her husband or protected by her rightful self-esteem, would loosen him
creditably. It had to be witnessed, for faith in it. He reverenced our
legendary good women, and he bowed to noble deeds; and he ascribed the
former to poetical creativeness, the latter operated as a scourging to
his flesh to yield its demoniacal inmates. Nothing of the kind was doing
at present.

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