Given the necessity for economy and a hard long-drawn-out struggle for a
livelihood and competence, Sam could conceive of living his life with Sue
and deriving something like gratification from just her companionship, and
her partnership in his efforts--here and there during the waiting years he
had met men who had found such gratification--a foreman in the shops or a
tobacconist from whom he bought his cigars--but for himself he felt that
he had gone with Sue too far upon another road to turn that way now with
anything like mutual zeal or interest. At bottom, his mind did not run
strongly toward the idea of the love of women as an end in life; he had
loved, and did love, Sue with something approaching religious fervour, but
the fervour was more than half due to the ideas she had given him and to
the fact that with him she was to have been the instrument for the
realisation of those ideas. He was a man with children in his loins and he
had given up his struggles for business eminence for the sake of preparing
himself for a kind of noble fatherhood of children, many children, strong
children, fit gifts to the world for two exceptionally favoured lives. In
all of his talks with Sue this idea had been present and dominant.
Pages:
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306