Was he absolutely about to destroy all the good that he had done for himself throughout the past years of his hitherto successful life?
or rather, as he at last put the question to himself more strongly,--was it not the case that he had already destroyed all that success?
His marriage with Lily, whether it was to be for good or bad, was now a settled thing, and was not regarded as a matter admitting of any doubt.

To do the man justice, I must declare that in all these moments of misery he still did the best he could to think of Lily herself as of a great treasure which he had won,--as of a treasure which should, and perhaps would, compensate him for his misery.

But there was the misery very plain.
He must give up his clubs, and his fashion, and all that he had hitherto gained, and be content to live a plain, humdrum, domestic life, with eight hundred a year, and a small house, full of babies.
It was not the kind of Elysium for which he had tutored himself.

Lily was very nice, very nice indeed.

She was, as he said to himself, "by odds, the nicest girl that he had ever seen." Whatever might now turn up, her happiness should be his first care.