urrender she had not given
all because of his blindness to what she offered. She could not
completely respect him. But she was his. She was naught apart from him.
She was the wife. His existence went on mainly as before; hers was
diverted, narrowed--fundamentally altered. Never now could she be
enfranchised into the male world!

IV

She slipped her arms into a new bodice purchased in London on the second
day of the marriage. Blushing, she had tried on that bodice in a great
shop in Oxford Street; then it was that she had first said 'my husband'
in public. All that day she had felt so weak and shy and light and
helpless and guilty that she had positively not known what she was
doing; she had moved in a phantom world. Only, she had perceived quite
steadily and practically that she must give more attention to her
clothes. Her old contempt for finery expired in the glory of her new
condition. And now, as she settled the elegant bodice on her shoulders,
and fastened it, and patted her hair, and picked up the skirt and poised
it over her head, she had a stern, preoccupied look, as of one who said:
"This that I am doing is important. I must not be hurried in doing it.
It is vital that I should look well and that no detail of my appearance
should jar." Already she could see herself standing before George when
he returned for the meal--the first meal which they would take together
in the home. She could feel his eyes on her: she could anticipate her
own mood--in which would be mingled pride, misgiving, pleasure,
helplessness, abandonment--and the secret condescension towards him of
her inmost soul.

All alone in the room she could feel his hands again on her shoulders: a
mysterious excitation.... She was a married woman. She had the right to
discuss Florrie's case with aloof disdain, if she chose. Her
respectability was unassailable. None might penetrate beyond the fact of
her marriage. And yet, far within her, she was ashamed. She dimly
admitted once more, as on several occasions previous to her marriage,
that she had dishonoured an ideal. Her conscience would not chime with
the conscience of society. She thought, as she prepared with pleasurable
expectancy for her husband: "This is not right. This cannot lead to
good. It must lead to evil. I am bound to suffer for it. The whole thing
is wrong. I know it and I have always known it."

Already she was disappointed with her marriage. Amid the fevers of
bodily appetite she c