It was very well to undertake to
give him a proof of loyalty; the real fact was that the knowledge of
his expecting a thing raised a presumption against it. It was as if he
had had the evil eye; as if his presence were a blight and his
favour a misfortune. Was the fault in himself, or only in the deep
mistrust she had conceived for him? This mistrust was now the clearest
result of their short married life; a gulf had opened between them
over which they looked at each other with eyes that were on either
side a declaration of the deception suffered. It was a strange
opposition, of the like of which she had never dreamed-an opposition
in which the vital principle of the one was a thing of contempt to the
other. It was not her fault-she had practised no deception; she had
only admired and believed. She had taken all the first steps in the
purest confidence, and then she had suddenly found the infinite
vista of a multiplied life to be a dark, narrow alley with a dead wall
at the end. Instead of leading to the high places of happiness, from
which the world would seem to lie below one, so that one could look
down with a sense of exaltation and advantage, and judge and choose
and pity, it led rather downward and earthward, into realms of
restriction and depression where the sound of other lives, easier
and freer, was heard as from above, and where it served to deepen
the feeling of failure.
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