With what poignant regret he looked back upon his original going to China! If only he had stayed and gone after her, that next day, and seized her again, and brought her back here to this room--they would have had five years of happiness.

She was sweeter now far than she had been then, and he could have watched her developing, instead of her coming to perfection all alone.

That under these circumstances she might never have acquired that polish of mind, and strange dignity and reserve of manner which was one of her greatest attractions, did not strike him--as it has been plainly said, he was not given to analysis in his judgment of things.
"I wish she had had a baby, Binko," he remarked, when once more seated in his chair.

"Then she would have been obliged to return at once of her own accord." Binko grunted and slobbered his acquiescence and sympathy, with his wise old fat head poked into his master's arm.
"You are trying to tell me that as I had gone off to China, she couldn't have done that in any case, you old scoundrel.

And of course you are right.