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54 that romance of omniscience, that a woman demands of her lover? She has seen me scratching my head, she has seen me counting on my fingers! Before she is seventeen she will be mortally tired of me, and by the time she is twenty I shall be fatally familiar and incurably stale. It 's very well for her to talk about life-long devotion and eternal gratitude. She doesn't know the meaning of words. She must grow and outgrow, that is her first necessity. She must come to woman's estate and pay the inevitable tribute. I can open the door and let in the lover. If she loves me now I shall have had my turn. I can't hope to be the object of two passions. I must thank the Lord for small favors!" Then as he seemed to taste, in advance, the bitterness of disappointment, casting about him angrily for some means of appeal: "I ought to go away and stay away for years and never write at all, instead of compounding ponderous diaries to make even my absence detestable. I ought to convert myself into a beneficent shadow, a vague tutelary name. Then I ought to come back in glory, fragrant with exotic perfumes and shod with shoes of mystery! Otherwise, I ought to clip the wings of her fancy and put her on half-rations. I ought to snub her and scold her and bully her and tell her she 's deplorably plain,—treat her as Rochester treats Jane Eyre. If I were only a good old Catholic, that I might shut her up in a convent and keep her childish and stupid and contented!" Roger felt that he was too doggedly conscientious; but abuse his conscience as he would, he could not make it yield an inch; so that in the constant strife between his egotistical purpose and his generous temper,