Kew."

"Quarrel! He quarrel! I cannot explain to you how we are situated,
Nelly. You would not understand me."

"Suppose you try. For instance, is he as fond of you as he was before
you married him?"

"I dont know."

Miss McQuinch shrugged herself impatiently.

"Really I do not, Nelly. He has changed in a way--I do not quite know
how or why. At first he was not very ceremonious. He used to make
remarks about people, and discuss everything that came into his head
quite freely before me. He was always kind, and never grumbled about his
dinner, or lost his temper, or anything of that kind; but--it was not
that he was coarse exactly: he was not that in the least; but he was
very open and unreserved and plain in his language; and somehow I did
not quite like it. He must have found this out: he sees and feels
everything by instinct; for he slipped back into his old manner, and
became more considerate and attentive than he had ever been before. I
was made very happy at first by the change; but I do not think he quite
understood what I wanted. I did not at all object to going down to the
country with him on his business trips; but he always goes alone now;
and he never mentions his work to me. And he is too careful as to what
he says to me. Of course, I know that he is right not to speak ill of
anybody; but still a man need not be so particular before his wife as
before strangers. He has given up talking to me altogether: that is the
plain truth, whatever he may pretend. When we do converse, his manner is
something like what it was in the laboratory at the Towers. Of course,
he sometimes becomes more familiar; only then he never seems in earnest,
but makes love to me in a bantering, half playful, half sarcastic way."

"You are rather hard to please, perhaps. I remember you used to say that
a husband should be just as tender and respectful after marriage as
before it. You seem to have broken poor Ned into this; and now you are
not satisfied."

"Nelly, if there is one subject on which girls are more idiotically
ignorant than on any other, it is happiness in marriage. A courtier, a
lover, a man who will not let the winds of heaven visit your face too
harshly, is very nice, no doubt; but he is not a husband. I want to be a
wife and not a fragile ornament kept in a glass case. He would as soon
think of submitting any project of his to the judgment of a doll as to
mine. If he has to explain or discuss any serious matter of b