"
"Does that mean that you're prepared to take her back?"
"I shouldn't hesitate. Why, she'll want me more than ever then.
When she's alone and humiliated and broken it would be
dreadful if she had nowhere to go."
He seemed to bear no resentment. I suppose it was commonplace
in me that I felt slightly outraged at his lack of spirit.
Perhaps he guessed what was in my mind, for he said:
"I couldn't expect her to love me as I loved her.
I'm a buffoon. I'm not the sort of man that women love.
I've always known that. I can't blame her if she's fallen
in love with Strickland."
"You certainly have less vanity than any man I've ever known,"
I said.
"I love her so much better than myself. It seems to me that
when vanity comes into love it can only be because really you
love yourself best. After all, it constantly happens that a
man when he's married falls in love with somebody else;
when he gets over it he returns to his wife, and she takes him
back, and everyone thinks it very natural. Why should it be
different with women?"
"I dare say that's logical," I smiled, "but most men are made
differently, and they can't.
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