That it was distinctly better than anything he had had at Blodgett's was inconsiderable beside the fact that Blodgett's hadn't owned him.

That he was owned now by his sister and the furniture, was plain to him the first time he sat down to figure out the difference between his salary and what it would cost him to let Ellen be a burden to him in the way that made her happiest.

Not that he thought of Ellen in that way; he was glad when he thought of it at all articulately, to be able to make life so little of a burden to her.

But though he saw quite clearly how, without some fortunate accident, the rest of his life would be taken up with making a home for Ellen and making it secure for her in case anything happened to him, he saw too, that there was no room in it for the Lovely Lady.

The worst of all this was that he did not see how he was to go on without her.
He had fled to her from the inadequacy of all substitutes for her that his life afforded, and she had ended by making him over into the sort of man who could never be satisfied with anything less.