I don't know

He sat there without conscious thoughts, without sense of the lapse of time, in a deep and grave amazement that seemed to suspend life rather then quicken it. "This is what had to be, then....... this is what had to be," he kept repeating to himself , as if he hung in the clutch of gloom. "What he had dreamed of had been so different that there was a mortal chill in his rapture.

Now as he reviewed his past, he saw into what a dull rutt he had sunk. The worst of doing ones duty was that it unfitted one for doing anything else.

May had suddenly died, carried off by the infectious pneumonia and he had honestly mourned her. There long years together had shown him that it did not matter so much that marriage was a dull duty , as long as it kept the dignity of duty: lapsing from that, it becomes a mere battle of ugly appetites.