struggle to
keep away from.

She had not done much thinking--probing--as to why it was her marriage
had failed. That was another one of the things her pride shut her out
from. When it failed she turned from it, clothed in pride, never naked
before the truth. There was something relaxing in just letting down the
barriers, barriers which had recently been so shaken that she was
fretted with trying to hold them up.

She wondered why Stella Cutting's marriage had succeeded and hers had
failed. The old answer that her marriage had failed because her husband
was unfaithful to her--answer that used always to leave her newly
fortified, did not satisfy tonight. She pushed on through that. There
was a curious emotional satisfaction in thus disobeying herself by
rushing into the denied places of self-examination. She was stirred by
what she was doing.

Her long holding back from this very thing was part of that same
instinct for restraint, what she had been pleased to think of as
fastidiousness, that had always held her back in love. It was alien to
her to let herself go; she had an instinct that held her away from
certain things--from the things themselves and from free thinking about
them. What she was doing now charged her with excitement.

She was wondering about herself and the man who was still legally her
husband. She was thinking of how different they were in the things of
love; how he gave and wanted giving, while her instinct had always been
to hold herself a little apart. There was something that displeased her
in abandonment to feeling. She did not like herself when she fully gave.
There had been something in her, some holding back, that passionate love
outraged. Intense demonstration was indelicate to her; she was that way,
she had not been able to help it. She loved in what she thought of as
her own fastidious way. Passion violated something in her. Falling in
love had made her happy, but with her love had never been able to sweep
down the reserves, and so things which love should have made beautiful
had remained for her ugly facts of life that she had an instinct to hold
herself away from. What she felt she did not like herself for feeling.
And so their marriage had been less union than man[oe]uvering.

She supposed she had, to be very blunt, starved Stuart's love. For he
wanted much love, a full and intense love life. He was passionate and
demonstrative. He gave and wanted, perhaps needed, much giving. He did