to her vow, and had sinned against him irredeemably; but he had thought that in her regard for another man she had slighted him; and, so thinking, he had subjected her to a severity of rebuke which no high-spirited woman could have borne.  His wife had not tried to bear it, in her indignation had not striven to cure the evil.  Then had come his resolution that she should submit, or part from him; and, having so resolved, nothing could shake him.  Though every friend he possessed was now against him including even Lady Milborough he was certain that he was right.  Had not his wife sworn to obey him, and was not her whole conduct one tissue of disobedience?  Would not the man who submitted to this find himself driven to submit to things worse?  Let her own her fault, let her submit, and then she should come back to him.

He had not considered, when his resolutions to this effect were first forming themselves, that a separation between a man and his wife once effected cannot be annulled, and as it were cured, so as to leave no cicatrice behind.  Gradually, as he spent day after day in thinking on this one subject, he came to feel that even were his wife to submit, to own her fault humbly, and to come back to him, this very coming back would in itself be a new wound.  Could he go out again with his wife on his arm to the houses of those who knew that he had repudiated her because of her friendship with another man?  Could he open again that house in Curzon Street, and let things go on quietly as they had gone before?  He told himself that it was impossible, that he and she were ineffably disgraced, that, if reunited, they must live buried out of sight in some remote distance.  And he told himself, also, that he could never be with her again night or day without thinking of the separation.  His happiness had been shipwrecked.

Then he had put himself into the hands of Mr Bozzle, and Mr Bozzle had taught him that women very often do go astray.  Mr Bozzle’s idea of female virtue was not high, and he had opportunities of implanting his idea on his client’s mind.  Trevelyan hated the man.  He was filled with disgust by Bozzle’s words, and was made miserable by Bozzle’s presence.  Yet he came gradually to believe in Bozzle.  Bozzle alone believed in him.  There were none but Bozzle who did not bid him to submit himself to his disobedient wife.  And then, as he came to believe in Bozzle, he grew to be more and more assured that no one but Bozzle could tell him facts.  His chivalry, and love, and sense of woman’s honour, with something of manly pride on his own part, so he told himself, had taught him to believe it to be impossible that his wife should have sinned.  Bozzle, who knew the world, thought otherwise.  Bozzle, who had no interest in the matter, one way or the other, would find out facts.  What if his chivalry, and love, and manly pride had deceived him?  There were women who sinned.  Then he prayed that his wife might not be such a woman; and got up from his prayers almost convinced that she was a sinner.