wife had not urged him to do it;
in fact, her pride, as she said, was in his fitness for the life he
had renounced; but she had acquiesced, and they had been very happy
together. That is to say, they made up their quarrels or ignored them.

They often accused each other of being selfish and indifferent, but she
knew that he would always sacrifice himself for her and the children;
and he, on his part, with many gibes and mockeries, wholly trusted in
her. They had grown practically tolerant of each other's disagreeable
traits; and the danger that really threatened them was that they should
grow too well satisfied with themselves, if not with each other. They
were not sentimental, they were rather matter-of-fact in their motives;
but they had both a sort of humorous fondness for sentimentality. They
liked to play with the romantic, from the safe vantage-ground of their
real practicality, and to divine the poetry of the commonplace. Their
peculiar point of view separated them from most other people, with whom
their means of self-comparison were not so good since their marriage as
before. Then they had travelled and seen much of the world, and they
had formed tastes which they had not always been able to indulge, but
of which they felt that the possession reflected distinction on them. It
enabled them to look down upon those who were without such tastes; but
they were not ill-natured, and so they did not look down so much with
contempt as with amusement. In their unfashionable neighborhood they had
the fame of being not exclusive precisely, but very much wrapped up in
themselves and their children.

Mrs. March was reputed to be very cultivated, and Mr. March even more
so, among the simpler folk around them. Their house had some good
pictures, which her aunt had brought home from Europe in more affluent
days, and it abounded in books on which he spent more than he ought.
They had beautified it in every way, and had unconsciously taken credit
to them selves for it. They felt, with a glow almost of virtue, how
perfectly it fitted their lives and their children's, and they believed
that somehow it expressed their characters--that it was like them. They
went out very little; she remained shut up in its refinement, working
the good of her own; and he went to his business, and hurried back
to forget it, and dream his dream of intellectual achievement in the
flattering atmosphere of her sympathy. He could not conceal from himself
t