easy it was for husband and wife to live parted lives, even whilst
their domestic habits seemed the same as ever; in books, that situation
had formerly struck her as inconceivable, but now she suspected that it
was the commonest of the results of marriage. Habit, habit; how strong
it is!

And how degrading! To it she attributed this bluntness in her faculties
of perception and enjoyment, this barrenness of the world about her. It
was dreadful to look forward upon a tract of existence thus vulgarized.
Already she recognized in herself the warnings of a possible future in
which she would have lost her intellectual ambitions. There is a
creeping paralysis of the soul, and did she not experience its
symptoms? Already it was hard to apply herself to any study that
demanded real effort; she was failing to pursue her Latin; she avoided
German books, because they were more exacting than French; her memory
had lost something of its grasp. Was she to become a woman of society,
a refined gossip, a pretentious echo of the reviews and of clever
people's talk? If not, assuredly she must exert a force of character
which she had begun to suspect was not in her.

Strange that the one person to whom she had disclosed something of her
real mind was also the one who seemed at the greatest distance from her
in this circle of friends. Involuntarily, she had spoken to Miriam as
to no one else. This might be a result of old associations. But had it
a connection with that curious surmise she had formed during the first
hour of her conversation with the Spences, and with Miriam
herself--that an unexpected intimacy was coming about between Miriam
and Mallard? For, in her frequent thoughts of Mallard, she had
necessarily wondered whether he would ever perceive the true issue of
her self-will; and, so far from desiring to blind him, she had almost a
hope that one day he might know how her life had shaped itself.
Mallard's position in her mind was a singular one; in some such way she
might have regarded a brother who had always lived remote from her, but
whom she had every reason to love and reverence. Her esteem for him was
boundless; he was the ideal of the artist, and at the same time of the
nobly strong man. Had such a thing been possible, she would have sought
to make _him_ her confidant. However it was to be explained, she felt
no wound to her self-respect in supposing him cognizant of all her
sufferings; rather, a solace, a source of strengt