earance. She had known she had
too many ideas; she had more even than he had supposed, many more than
she had expressed to him when he had asked her to marry him. Yes, she
HAD been hypocritical; she had liked him so much. She had too many ideas
for herself; but that was just what one married for, to share them with
some one else. One couldn't pluck them up by the roots, though of course
one might suppress them, be careful not to utter them. It had not been
this, however, his objecting to her opinions; this had been nothing. She
had no opinions--none that she would not have been eager to sacrifice in
the satisfaction of feeling herself loved for it. What he had meant
had been the whole thing--her character, the way she felt, the way she
judged. This was what she had kept in reserve; this was what he had not
known until he had found himself--with the door closed behind, as it
were--set down face to face with it. She had a certain way of looking at
life which he took as a personal offence. Heaven knew that now at least
it was a very humble, accommodating way! The strange thing was that
she should not have suspected from the first that his own had been so
different. She had thought it so large, so enlightened, so perfectly
that of an honest man and a gentleman. Hadn't he assured her that he had
no superstitions, no dull limitations, no prejudices that had lost their
freshness? Hadn't he all the appearance of a man living in the open air
of the world, indifferent to small considerations, caring only for truth
and knowledge and believing that two intelligent people ought to look
for them together and, whether they found them or not, find at least
some happiness in the search? He had told her he loved the conventional;
but there was a sense in which this seemed a noble declaration. In that
sense, that of the love of harmony and order and decency and of all the
stately offices of life, she went with him freely, and his warning had
contained nothing ominous. But when, as the months had elapsed, she
had followed him further and he had led her into the mansion of his own
habitation, then, THEN she had seen where she really was.

She could live it over again, the incredulous terror with which she
had taken the measure of her dwelling. Between those four walls she had
lived ever since; they were to surround her for the rest of her life.
It was the house of darkness, the house of dumbness, the house of
suffocation. Osmond's beautiful