aris--I should be the
last to object to your visiting her. But in the country it's different.
Even the best provincial society is what you would call narrow: I
don't deny it; and if some of our friends met Madame de Vireville at
Givre--well, it would produce a bad impression. You're inclined to
ridicule such considerations, but gradually you'll come to see their
importance; and meanwhile, do trust me when I ask you to be guided by
my mother. It is always well for a stranger in an old society to err a
little on the side of what you call its prejudices but I should rather
describe as its traditions."

After that she no longer tried to laugh or argue her husband out of his
convictions. They WERE convictions, and therefore unassailable. Nor
was any insincerity implied in the fact that they sometimes seemed to
coincide with hers. There were occasions when he really did look at
things as she did; but for reasons so different as to make the distance
between them all the greater. Life, to Mr. Leath, was like a walk
through a carefully classified museum, where, in moments of doubt, one
had only to look at the number and refer to one's catalogue; to his wife
it was like groping about in a huge dark lumber-room where the exploring
ray of curiosity lit up now some shape of breathing beauty and now a
mummy's grin.

In the first bewilderment of her new state these discoveries had had the
effect of dropping another layer of gauze between herself and reality.
She seemed farther than ever removed from the strong joys and pangs for
which she felt herself made. She did not adopt her husband's views, but
insensibly she began to live his life. She tried to throw a compensating
ardour into the secret excursions of her spirit, and thus the old
vicious distinction between romance and reality was re-established for
her, and she resigned herself again to the belief that "real life" was
neither real nor alive.

The birth of her little girl swept away this delusion. At last she felt
herself in contact with the actual business of living: but even this
impression was not enduring.

Everything but the irreducible crude fact of child-bearing assumed, in
the Leath household, the same ghostly tinge of unreality. Her husband,
at the time, was all that his own ideal of a husband required. He was
attentive, and even suitably moved: but as he sat by her bedside, and
thoughtfully proffered to her the list of people who had "called to
enquire", she looke