This anniversary had fallen on a Sunday, at a season of
thick fog and general outward gloom; but he had brought her his
customary offering, having known her now long enough to have
established a hundred small traditions. It was one of his proofs
to himself, the present he made her on her birthday, that he hadn't
sunk into real selfishness. It was mostly nothing more than a
small trinket, but it was always fine of its kind, and he was
regularly careful to pay for it more than he thought he could
afford. "Our habit saves you, at least, don't you see?" because it
makes you, after all, for the vulgar, indistinguishable from other
men. What's the most inveterate mark of men in general? Why the
capacity to spend endless time with dull women--to spend it I won't
say without being bored, but without minding that they are, without
being driven off at a tangent by it; which comes to the same thing.
I'm your dull woman, a part of the daily bread for which you pray
at church. That covers your tracks more than anything."
"And what covers yours?" asked Marcher, whom his dull woman could
mostly to this extent amuse.
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