For it is
intolerable to live constantly with one human being who perceives
one's small meannesses. It is really death to do so--that is why so
many marriages turn out unhappily.
I, for instance, am a rather greedy man; I have a taste for good
cookery and a watering tooth at the mere sound of the names of
certain comestibles. If Florence had discovered this secret of mine
I should have found her knowledge of it so unbearable that I never
could have supported all the other privations of the r?gime that
she extracted from me. I am bound to say that Florence never
discovered this secret.
Certainly she never alluded to it; I dare say she never took
sufficient interest in me.
And the secret weakness of Florence--the weakness that she could
not bear to have me discover, was just that early escapade with the
fellow called Jimmy. Let me, as this is in all probability the last
time I shall mention Florence's name, dwell a little upon the
change that had taken place in her psychology. She would not, I
mean, have minded if I had discovered that she was the mistress
of Edward Ashburnham. She would rather have liked it. Indeed,
the chief trouble of poor Leonora in those days was to keep
Florence from making, before me, theatrical displays, on one line
or another, of that very fact.
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