marriage, discover whatever justification, security, it possessed. Was
his admiration for Taou Yuen sufficient provision for his part of their
future together? It was founded largely on her superiority to the world
he had known; and here it was necessary for him to convince himself that
his wedding had not been merely the result of romantic accident. He knew
that the sensual had had almost no part in it, it had been mental; an act
of pity crystallizing his revolt against what he felt to be the impotence
of "Christian" ethics. Yet this was not sufficient; for he, like Rhoda,
had found under his wife's immobility the flux of immemorial woman.

No, it wasn't enough; but more existed, he was certain of that. No one
could expect him, now, to experience the thrill of idealized passion that
was the sole property of youth. What feeling he had had for Nettie--he
was obliged to return to her from the fact that it was the only possible
comparison--had come from very much the same source as the other. The
old impersonal motives!

The danger, Rhoda pointed out, had been admitted when his marriage made
impossible the continuation of that aloof position. He doubted that it
could change him so utterly. The thought of the entertainment his wife
would afford him in Salem expanded. He regretted that the best, the
calling and comments of the women, was necessarily lost to him, but Taou
Yuen would repeat a great deal: she, too, had a sly sense of the
ridiculous. He hoped that his sister-in-law didn't suppose her helpless;
the impenetrable Manchu control gave her a pitiless advantage over any
less absolute civilization. In the darkness before sleep the heavy exotic
scents in the room oppressed him strangely.

He rose early, and quietly dressing went out into the garden: buds on
the June roses against the high blank fence on the street were swelling