re.
Staring into the dark wood she saw it all. She could completely capture
him by responding to his passion. Without that she was too queer, too
untidy, too undisciplined, to hold him at all. But she could not lie,
she could not pretend.

She kissed him.

"Paul, let's be friends, then. Splendid friends. Oh! we will be happy!"

But as he kissed her she knew that she had lost him.

Paul was very kind to her during their stay at Little Harben, but they
recovered none of that old friendship that had been theirs before they
married. Too many things were now between them. By the end of that
month Maggie longed to return to Skeaton. It was not only that she felt
crushed and choked by the strangling green that hemmed in the old
house--the weeds and the trees, and the plants seemed to draw in the
night closer and closer about the windows and doors--but also solitude
with Paul was revealing to her, in a ruthless, cruel manner, his
weaknesses. They were none of them, perhaps, very terrible, but she did
not wish to see them. She would like to shut her eyes to them all. If
she lost that friendly kindness that she felt for him then indeed she
had lost everything. She felt as though he were wilfully trying to tug
it away from her.

Why was it that she had never shrunk from the faults of Martin and
Uncle Mathew--faults so plain and obvious--and now shrunk from Paul's?
Paul's were such little ones--a desire for praise and appreciation, a
readiness to be cheated into believing that all was well when he knew
that things were very wrong, an eagerness to be liked even by quite
worthless people, sloth and laziness, living lies that were of no
importance save as sign-posts to the cowardice of his soul. Yes,
cowardice! That was the worst of all. Was it his religion that had made
him cowardly? Why was Maggie so terribly certain that if the necessity
for physical defence of her or some helpless creature arose Paul would
evade it and talk about "turning the other cheek"? He was so large a
man and so soft--a terrific egoist finally, in the centre of his soul,
an egoist barricaded by superstitions and fears and lies, but not a
ruthless egoist, because that demanded energy.

And yet, with all this, he had so many good points. He was a child, a
baby, like so many clergymen. Even her father could have been defended
by that plea ...

He was not radically bad, he was radically good, but he had never known
discipline or real sorrow or hardship.