The greatest blessing of all was of course that Dawling thought so.

Her future was ruled with the straightest line, and so for that matter was his.

There were two facts to which before I left my friends I gave time to sink into my spirit.

One was that he had changed by some process as effective as Flora's change, had been simplified somehow into service as she had been simplified into success.
He was such a picture of inspired intervention as I had never yet conceived: he would exist henceforth for the sole purpose of rendering unnecessary, or rather impossible, any reference even on her own part to his wife's infirmity.

Oh yes, how little desire he would ever give _me_ to refer to it! He principally after a while made me feel--and this was my second lesson--that, good-natured as he was, my being there to see it all oppressed him; so that by the time the act ended I recognised that I too had filled out my hour.