Chapter 2 Summary

May's aunt dies and leaves her a house and income in London, so she and Marcher are able to see each other frequently now. What binds them together is his secret, his obsession. If she hadn't come along, he would have moved on, would have made a life separate from the feeling he had, but she has brought it forth again, and the two of them are bound together by this shared knowledge.

He is careful to recognize that she has a life of her own. The irony is that because the relationship is based on his obsession, marriage is out the question, he reasons. He feels that he cannot ask a woman to share something that is lying in wait for him "like a crouching beast in the jungle." He believes that an honorable man would not take a lady on a...