He even asked himself, as he had done once or twice before in his life, whether her love for him implied the slightest dependence upon his society.

Wasn't it perfectly possible that his going would free her life, would make it easier instead of harder?
Every man, he knew, felt the element of freedom beneath the despair of breaking even the tenderest of ties.

Some women, he supposed, might feel the same way about their love-affairs.

But could they feel the same about their maternal relations?
Could it be that his mother, that pure, heroic, self-sacrificing soul, was now thinking more about her liberty than her loss?
Had not their relation always been peculiarly free?
he found himself thinking reproachfully.

Once, he remembered, when he had been working unusually hard he had welcomed her absence at one of her conferences on inebriety.