he taught the boys on
Sundays. He was all the time exciting himself with the proximity
of some secret that he had not yet fathomed.

In the house, he served his wife and the little matriarchy.
She loved him because he was the father of her children. And she
always had a physical passion for him. So he gave up trying to
have the spiritual superiority and control, or even her respect
for his conscious or public life. He lived simply by her
physical love for him. And he served the little matriarchy,
nursing the child and helping with the housework, indifferent
any more of his own dignity and importance. But his abandoning
of claims, his living isolated upon his own interest, made him
seem unreal, unimportant.

Anna was not publicly proud of him. But very soon she learned
to be indifferent to public life. He was not what is called a
manly man: he did not drink or smoke or arrogate importance. But
he was her man, and his very indifference to all claims of
manliness set her supreme in her own world with him. Physically,
she loved him and he satisfied her. He went alone and subsidiary
always. At first it had irritated her, the outer world existed
so little to him. Looking at him with outside eyes, she was
inclined to sneer at him. But her sneer changed to a sort of
respect. She respected him, that he could serve her so simply
and completely. Above all, she loved to bear his children. She
loved to be the source of children.

She could not understand him, his strange, dark rages and his
devotion to the church. It was the church building he cared for;
and yet his soul was passionate for something. He laboured
cleaning the stonework, repairing the woodwork, restoring the
organ, and making the singing as perfect as possible. To keep
the church fabric and the church-ritual intact was his business;
to have the intimate sacred building utterly in his own hands,
and to make the form of service complete. There was a little
bright anguish and tension on his face, and in his intent
movements. He was like a lover who knows he is betrayed, but who
still loves, whose love is only the more intense. The church was
false, but he served it the more attentively.

During the day, at his work in the office, he kept himself
suspended. He did not exist. He worked automatically till it was
time to go home.

He loved with a hot heart the dark-haired little Ursula, and
he waited for the child to come to consciousness. Now the mother
monopoliz