The Wheel of Life by Ellen Glasgow

When Kemper, in an emotional moment, had declared that he would give up his trip to Europe, he had expected that Laura would see in the sacrifice a convincing proof of the stability of his affection; but, to his surprise, she had accepted the suggestion as a shade too much in the natural order of events. Europe, empty of his presence, would have been in her eyes a desert; and that any grouping of mountains or arrangement of buildings could offer the slightest temptation beside the promised month in the Adirondacks appeared to her as entirely beyond the question. If the truth were told he did immeasurably prefer the prospect of a summer spent by her side, but he felt at the same time -- though he hardly admitted this even to himself -- that in remaining in America he was giving up a good deal of his ordinary physical enjoyments. It was not that he wanted in the very least to go; he felt merely that he ought to have been seriously commended because he stayed away.

Since he had never relinquished so much as a day's pleasure for any woman in the past, he was almost overcome by appreciation of his present generosity.