Senator North by Gertrude Atherton

He came over to dinner that night, and Betty, who had walked about in a vague dreamy state all day, dressed herself again in white. She woke up suddenly as she came into his presence, and was the life of the dinner. Harriet seemed absent of mind and nervous, but Emory's spirits were normal, and he was more attentive to Sally Carter than she to him. But Betty's interest in her friends' affairs had dropped to a very low ebb. She was in a new mental world, stranger than that entered by most women, for her hands were empty, but she was happy. She had reflected again -- in so far as she had been capable of reflection -- that most marriages were prosaic, and that her own high romance, her inestimable happiness in loving and being loved by a man in whom her pride was so great, was a lot to be envied of all women. It was not all the destiny she herself would have chosen, but it compassed a great deal.

She would have made him wholly happy, been his whole happiness; marriage between them never would have been prosaic, and she would not have cared if it were; she would have made him forget the deep trials and sorrows of his past and the worries and annoyances of the present. But this was not to be, and there was much she could do for him and would.