It's damnable as you say, but--other women have to stand it." "Other women!" Tyson flung the words out like an execration that throbbed with his scorn and loathing of the sex.

Other women! By an act of his will he had put his wife on a high pedestal for the moment--made her shine, for the moment, white and fair above the contemptible herd, her obscure multitudinous sisterhood.

Other women! The phrase had an undertone of dull passionate self-reproach that was distinctly audible to Stanistreet's finer ear.

Stanistreet knew many things about Tyson--knew, for instance, the cause that but for this would have taken him up to town; and Tyson knew that he knew.
If it came to that, Stanistreet too had some grounds for self-reproach.
He took up a book and tried to read; but the words reeled and staggered and grew dim before him; he found himself listening to the ticking of the clock, and the pulse of time became a woman's heart beating violently with pain, a heart indistinguishable from his own.

Other women (it was he who had used the words)--was it simply by her share in their grim lot that Mrs.Nevill Tyson had contrived to invest herself with this somber significance?
Perhaps.