himself! She understood the meaning of this.
She could read his mind so far. She endeavoured not to read the book
too closely,--but there it was, opened to her wider day by day, and
she knew that the lessons which it taught were vulgar and damnable.

And yet she had to hide from him her own perception of himself! She
had to sympathise with his desires and yet to abstain from doing
that which his desires demanded from her. Alas, poor girl! She soon
knew that her marriage had been a mistake. There was probably no
one moment in which she made the confession to herself. But the
conviction was there, in her mind, as though the confession had
been made. Then there would come upon her unbidden, unwelcome
reminiscences of Arthur Fletcher,--thoughts that she would struggle
to banish, accusing herself of some heinous crime because the
thoughts would come back to her. She remembered his light wavy hair,
which she had loved as one loves the beauty of a dog, which had
seemed to her young imagination, to her in the ignorance of her early
years, to lack something of a dreamed-of manliness. She remembered
his eager, boyish, honest entreaties to herself, which to her had
been without that dignity of a superior being which a husband should
possess. She became aware that she had thought the less of him
because he had thought the more of her. She had worshipped this other
man because he had assumed superiority and had told her that he
was big enough to be her master. But now,--now that it was all too
late,--the veil had fallen from her eyes. She could now see the
difference between manliness and "deportment." Ah,--that she should
ever have been so blind, she who had given herself credit for seeing
so much clearer than they who were her elders! And now, though at
last she did see clearly, she could not have the consolation of
telling any one what she had seen. She must bear it all in silence,
and live with it, and still love this god of clay that she had
chosen. And, above all, she must never allow herself even to think of
that other man with the wavy light hair,--that man who was rising in
the world, of whom all people said all good things, who was showing
himself to be a man by the work he did, and whose true tenderness she
could never doubt.

Her father was left to her. She could still love her father. It might
be that it would be best for him that she should go back to her old
home, and take care of his old age. If he should wish it,