There he was doing this, and he did not see the imbecility of it! In after time we can correlate incidents and circumstances, viewing them in a perspective more or less correct.

We see that we might have said and done a hundred helpful things.

Well, we know that we did not, and there's an end on't.

I felt, as I say, impatient with Jaffery, although--or was it because ?--I recognised the bald fact that he was in love with Doria to the maximum degree of besottedness.
You see, when you say to a man: "Why do you let the woman kick you ?" and he replies, with a glare of indignation: "She has deigned to touch my unworthy carcass with her sacred boot!" what in the world are you to do, save resume the interrupted enjoyment of your cigar?
This I did.

I also found amusement in comparing his meek wooing, like that of an early Italian amorist, with his rumbustious theories as to marriage by capture and other primitive methods of bringing woman to heel.
Doria, seeing him unresentful of kicking, continued to kick (when Barbara wasn't looking--for Barbara had read her a lecture on the polite treatment of trustees and executors) and made him more her slave than ever.