For even if a woman has made a foolish match, it is hard to expect her to confess as much: and, after all, a husband is a husband, and let his faults be what they might, he was still her Elsley; her idol once; and perhaps (so she hoped) her idol again hereafter, and if not, still he was her husband, and that was enough.
"By which you mean, sir, that she considers herself bound to endure everything and anything from him, simply because she had been married to him in church ?" Yes, and a great deal more.

Not merely being married in church; but what being married in church means, and what every woman who is a woman understands; and lives up to without flinching, though she die a martyr for it, or a confessor; a far higher saint, if the truth was known, as it will be some day, than all the holy virgins who ever fasted and prayed in a convent since the days when Macarius first turned fakeer.

For to a true woman, the mere fact of a man's being her husband, put it on the lowest ground that you choose, is utterly sacred, divine, all-powerful; in the might of which she can conquer self in a way which is an everyday miracle; and the man who does not feel about the mere fact of a woman's having given herself utterly to him, just what she herself feels about it, ought to be despised by all his fellows;--were it not that, in that case, it would be necessary to despise more human beings than is safe for the soul of any man.
That fortnight was the sunniest which Elsley had passed, since he made secret love to Lucia in Eaton Square.

Romantic walks, the company of a beautiful woman as ready to listen as she was to talk, free licence to pour out all his fancies, sure of admiration, if not of flattery, and pardonably satisfied vanity--all these are comfortable things for most men, who have nothing better to comfort them.

But, on the whole, this feast did not make Elsley a better or a wiser man at home.