There he was, fashioned and purified, ready for her use.

What would she make of him?
That she should make nothing of him at all was as incredible to him as that there should not be, somewhere in the world, Polchester town in Glebeshire county.
There had been with him, I think, from the first a fear that "it was all too good to be true"-- _Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes_.

It is not easy for any man, after thirty years' shy shrinking from the world, to shake himself free of superstitions, and such terrors the quiet and retired Polchester had bred in Trenchard's heart as though it had been the very epitome of life at its lowest and vilest.

It simply came to this, that he refused to believe that Marie Ivanovna had been given to him only to be taken away again.

About women he knew simply nothing and Russian women are not the least complicated of their sex.