He held aloof, brooding over his wrongs, accumulating a
vast resentment against the world and all of its inhabitants, obsessed
by the single desire to make some one else suffer for the ignominy
that had come to him.
Strangely enough, his most bitter resentment was lodged against the
wife who had stood by him all these years, through thick and thin,
through incessant storm and hardship, with a staunchness that now
maddened him, because, down in his heart, he could see no guile in
her. She was too good for him; she held herself above him; she made
him to feel that he was not of her world--from the beginning. She was
loyal because it would have put her in his class if she had lifted her
voice in public complaint. He knew that she loathed him; he hated her
for the virtue which gave her the right to despise him and yet to
remain loyal to him. His sodden, debased soul resented the odious
comparison that his own flesh and blood justly could make. There had
been bitter moments when this maudlin wretch almost convinced himself
that he could rejoice in the discovery that Christine was not of his
flesh and blood, that this too virtuous woman was not pure, after all.
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