In his shrinking from the humiliation of a
dependent attitude towards Bulstrode, he began to familiarize his
imagination with another step even more unlike his remembered self.
He began spontaneously to consider whether it would be possible
to carry out that puerile notion of Rosamond's which had often made
him angry, namely, that they should quit Middlemarch without seeing
anything beyond that preface. The question came--"Would any man
buy the practice of me even now, for as little as it is worth?
Then the sale might happen as a necessary preparation for going away."
But against his taking this step, which he still felt to be
a contemptible relinquishment of present work, a guilty turning
aside from what was a real and might be a widening channel for
worthy activity, to start again without any justified destination,
there was this obstacle, that the purchaser, if procurable at all,
might not be quickly forthcoming. And afterwards? Rosamond in
a poor lodging, though in the largest city or most distant town,
would not find the life that could save her from gloom,
and save him from the reproach of having plunged her into it.
For when a man is at the foot of the hill in his fortunes, he may
stay a long while there in spite of professional accomplishment.
In the British climate there is no incompatibility between scientific
insight and furnished lodgings: the incompatibility is chiefly
between scientific ambition and a wife who objects to that kind
of residence.
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