There was no getting around it. With the best will in the world to make allowance for the infirmities of her sex, I was painfully and resentfully aware that Miss Berrith was not merely a disturbing influence in my life, but the only disturbing influence: and not the least exasperating element of the situation lay in the fact that it was none of my making. If, knowing the feminine faculty for creating a disturbance — “le mal que pent faire une femme,” as De Musset deftly puts it — I had nevertheless seen fit to marry, it would have been a different thing. If you play with matches, and set yourself ablaze, you have no one but yourself to blame, and it is unreasonable and childish to squeal at Destiny: but if some one discharges Roman-candle balls in at your front windows, there is every warrant for your regarding it as a liberty and an imposition. I conceive that I had the best of reasons for considering my treatment at Miss Berrith’s hands as saliently unhandsome.
