e had told himself
so often) the situation she had created. It appeared to him, of all
situations, the crudest and most simple. It had its merciful limits. The
discomfort of it, once vague, had grown, to his thwarted senses, almost
brutally defined. He could at least say, "It was here the trouble began,
and here, therefore, it shall end."

He thought he had sounded the depths of her repugnance, and could measure
by it his own misery. He said, "At any rate I know where I am"; and he
believed that if he stayed where he was, if he respected his wife's
prejudices, her prejudices would be bound to respect him. He could not
make her love him, but at least he considered that he had justified his
claim to her respect.

And now she had opened his eyes, and he had looked at her, and seen
things that had not (till that moment) come into his vision of their
separation. He saw subtler hostilities, incurable, indestructible
repugnances, attitudes at which his charity stood aghast. The situation
(so far from being crude and simple) involved endless refinements and
complexities of torture. He despaired now of ever reaching her.

Majendie had caught his first clear sight of the spiritual ramparts.

"I'm not good enough for her," he said. She had kept him with her that
evening, not because she wanted him to stay, but because she wanted him
to understand.

He had shown her that he understood by going to the friends for whom he
was good enough, who were good enough for him.

He went more than ever now, sometimes to the Ransomes, oftener to Gorst,
oftenest of all to Lawson Hannay. He liked more than ever to sit with
Mrs. Hannay; to lean up against the everlasting soft cushion she
presented to his soreness. More than ever he liked to talk to her of
simple things; of their acquaintance; of Edith, who had been a little
better, certainly no worse, this summer; of Peggy, of Peggy's future and
her education. He would sit for hours on Mrs. Hannay's sofa, his body
leaning back, his head bowed forward, his chin sunk on his breast,
listening attentively, yet with a dazed and rather stupid expression, to
Mrs. Hannay's conversation. His own was sometimes monotonous and a little
dull. He was growing even physically heavy. But Mrs. Hannay did not seem
to mind.

There was a certain justice in Anne's justification. He didn't
consciously prefer the Hannays' society to hers; but he actually found it
more agreeable, and for the reasons she suspected.