And she might so easily have missed this.

It is hard for girls to realize sometimes that the success of marriage depends on real qualities in the man, in mastery over things and not just over her susceptibilities.

It is quite the most sensible thing I've known Eunice to do." "Only," Peter reminded her for his part, "I'm not just exactly doing it because it is sensible." Her "of course not" was convinced enough to have stilled the vague ruffling of his mind, without doing it.

He didn't object to having his qualifications as Eunice Goodward's husband taken solidly, but why dwell upon them when it was just the particular distinction of his engagement that it had the intensity, the spiritual extension which was supposed to put it out of reach of material considerations.

Even Ellen had done better by him than this.
He was forced, however, to come back to the substance of Mrs.Lessing's comment a few days later when he was being dined at the club by a twice-removed cousin of the Goodward's, the upright, elderly symbol of the male sanction which was the most that his fiancee's fatherless condition could furnish forth.