'I cannot affect, Anastasie, to be anything but justly wounded.

I feel this, I feel it, my wife, acutely.' 'I knew you would,' she said.

'But if you had seen his distress! We must make allowances, we must sacrifice our feelings.' 'I trust, my dear, you have never found me averse to sacrifices,' returned the Doctor very stiffly.
'And you will let me go and tell him that you have agreed?
It will be like your noble nature,' she cried.
So it would, he perceived--it would be like his noble nature! Up jumped his spirits, triumphant at the thought.

'Go, darling,' he said nobly, 'reassure him.

The subject is buried; more--I make an effort, I have accustomed my will to these exertions--and it is forgotten.' A little after, but still with swollen eyes and looking mortally sheepish, Jean-Marie reappeared and went ostentatiously about his business.