A Civil Contract

They used to say of me that I'd as many lucky escapes as Harry Smith!' 'Shouldn't be at all surprised: I've seen one of 'em myself,' Brough said cryptically.

Yet, after all, Jenny thought she had been granted more than she hoped for when she married him. He did love her: differently, but perhaps more enduringly; and he had grown to depend on her. She thought that they would have many years of quiet content: never reaching the heights, but living together in comfort and deepening friendship.

But it was only in epic tragedies that gloom was unrelieved. In real life tragedy and comedy were so intermingled that when one was most wretched ridiculous things happened to make one laugh in spite of oneself

After all, life was not made up of moments of exaltation, but of quite ordinary, everyday things

He took her face between his hands, turning it up, and looking down at her for a moment before he kissed her. "I do love you, Jenny," he said gently. "Very much indeed-- you are part of my life. Julia was never that-only a boy's impractical dream.

Julia stood for his youth, and the high hopes he had cherished; and although he might no longer yearn to possess her she would remain nostalgically dear to him while life endured.

He didn't choose between me and you, Julia: it was between me and ruin.

Lord, if we were all to marry our first loves what a plague of ill-assorted marriages there would be!

She thought that Fontley had suffered as much from a negligent mistress as from an improvident master.

No, but on the other hand you don't enact me Cheltenham tragedies when I've barely swallowed my breakfast.

I’ll say no more about that, or I’ll be falling into the dismals

Julia stood for his youth, and the high hopes he had cherished; and although he might no longer yearn to possess her she would remain nostalgically dear to him while life endured. Yet,