Let me enjoy the earth no less because the all-enacting light that fashioned forth its loveliness had other aims than my delight. - Thomas Hardy

Misery taught him nothing more than defiant endurance of it.

But you shouldn't have let her. That's the only way with these fanciful women that chaw high — innocent or guilty. She'd have come round in time. We all do! Custom does it! It's all the same in the end! However, I think she's fond of her man still — whatever he med be of her. You were too quick about her. I shouldn't have let her go! I should have kept her chained on — her spirit for kicking would have been broke soon enough! There's nothing like bondage and a stone-deaf taskmaster for taming us women. Besides, you've got the laws on your side. Moses knew.

Marriage transforms a distraction into a support, the power of which should be, and happily often is, in direct proportion to the degree of imbecility it supplants.