It was the house of darkness, the house of dumbness, the
house of suffocation. Osmond's beautiful mind gave it neither light
nor air; Osmond's beautiful mind indeed seemed to peep down from a
small high window and mock at her. Of course it had not been
physical suffering; for physical suffering there might have been a
remedy. She could come and go; she had her liberty; her husband was
perfectly polite. He took himself so seriously; it was something
appalling. Under all his culture, his cleverness, his amenity, under
his good-nature, his facility, his knowledge of life, his egotism
lay hidden like a serpent in a bank of flowers. She had taken him
seriously, but she had not taken him so seriously as that. How could
she-especially when she had known him better? She was to think of
him as he thought of himself as the first gentleman in Europe. So it
was that she had thought of him at first, and that indeed was the
reason she had married him. But when she began to see what it
implied she drew back; there was more in the bond than she had meant
to put her name to. It implied a sovereign contempt for every one
but some three or four very exalted people whom he envied, and for
everything in the world but half a dozen ideas of his own.
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