His grey eyes searched her countenance with that horrible intensity of fanaticism which is so like the look of cruelty, of greed, of any passion orig… - George Gissing

[A] sensitive man who no longer finds himself on equal terms with his natural associates, shrinks into loneliness, and learns with some surprise how very willing people are to forget his existence. London is a wilderness abounding in anchorites — voluntary or constrained.

My aim is to have easy command of all the pleasures desired by a cultivated man. I want to live among beautiful things, and never to be troubled by a thought of vulgar difficulties. I want to travel and enrich my mind in foreign countries. I want to associate on equal terms with refined and interesting people. I want to be known, to be familiarly referred to, to feel when I enter a room that people regard me with some curiosity.

Isn’t it a most ridiculous thing that married people who both wish to separate can’t do so and be quite free again?’

‘I suppose it would lead to all sorts of troubles — don’t you think?’

‘So people say about every new step in civilisation. What would have been thought twenty years ago of a proposal to make all married women independent of their husbands in money matters? All sorts of absurd dangers were foreseen, no doubt. And it’s the same now about divorce. In America people can get divorced if they don’t suit each other — at all events in some of the States — and does any harm come of it? Just the opposite I should think.’

Edith mused. Such speculations were daring, but she had grown accustomed to think of Amy as an ‘advanced’ woman, and liked to imitate her in this respect.