failed, after analysis, to understand it, though he
had naturally more lights on it than any one else.
He knew how it subsisted in spite of an equal con
sciousness of his being neither mentally nor physi
cally quite helpless, neither a dunce nor a cripple;
he knew it to be absolute, though secret, and also,
strange to say, about common undertakings, not
discouraging, not prohibitive. Only now was he
having to think if it were prohibitive in respect to
marriage; only now, for the first time, had he to
weigh his case in scales. The scales, as he sat with
Kate, often dangled in the line of his vision; he
saw them, large and black, while he talked or lis
tened, take, in the bright air, singular positions.
Sometimes the right was down and sometimes the
left; never a happy equipoise one or the other
always kicking the beam. Thus was kept before
him the question of whether it were more ignoble
to ask a woman to take her chance with you, or to
accept it from one's conscience that her chance
could be at the best but one of the degrees of priva
tion; whether, too, otherwise, marrying for money
mightn't after all be a smaller cause of shame than
the mere dread of marrying without. Through
these variations of mood and view, all the same, the
mark on his forehead stood clear; he saw himself
remain without whether he married or not. It was
a line on which his fancy could be admirably active;
the innumerable ways of making money were beauti
fully present to him; he could have handled them,

[[71]]

p070 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p071w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p072

v?