He
would thoroughly establish the heads under which her affairs, her
requirements, her peculiarities--he went so far as to give them the
latitude of that name--would come into their intercourse. All this
naturally was a sign of how much he took the intercourse itself for
granted. There was nothing more to be done about that. It simply
existed; had sprung into being with her first penetrating question
to him in the autumn light there at Weatherend. The real form it
should have taken on the basis that stood out large was the form of
their marrying. But the devil in this was that the very basis
itself put marrying out of the question. His conviction, his
apprehension, his obsession, in short, wasn't a privilege he could
invite a woman to share; and that consequence of it was precisely
what was the matter with him. Something or other lay in wait for
him, amid the twists and the turns of the months and the years,
like a crouching Beast in the Jungle. It signified little whether
the crouching Beast were destined to slay him or to be slain. The
definite point was the inevitable spring of the creature; and the
definite lesson from that was that a man of feeling didn't cause
himself to be accompanied by a lady on a tiger-hunt.
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