Isabel's cheek burned when she asked herself if she had really married on a factitious theory, in order to do something finely appreciable with her money.But she was able to answer quickly enough that this was only half the story.It was because a certain ardour took possession of her-a sense of the earnestness of his affection and a delight in his personal qualities.He was better than any one else.This supreme conviction had filled her life for months, and enough of it still remained to prove to her that she could not have done otherwise.The finest-in the sense of being the subtlest-manly organism she had ever known had become her property, and the recognition of her having but to put out her hands and take it had been originally a sort of act of devotion.She had not been mistaken about the beauty of his mind; she knew that organ perfectly now.She had lived with it, she had lived in it almost-it appeared to have become her habitation.If she had been captured it had taken a firm hand to seize her; that reflection perhaps had some worth.A mind more ingenious, more pliant, more cultivated, more trained to admirable exercises, she had not encountered; and it was this exquisite instrument she had now to reckon with.She lost herself in infinite dismay when she thought of the magnitude of his deception.It was a wonder, perhaps, in view of this, that he didn't hate her more.She remembered perfectly the first sign he had given of it-it had been like the bell that was to ring up the curtain upon the real drama of their life.He said to her one day that she had too many ideas and that she must get rid of them.He had told her that already, before their marriage; but then she had not noticed it: it had come back to her only afterwards.This time she might well have noticed it, because he had really meant it.The words had been nothing superficially; but when in the light of deepening experience she had looked into them they had then appeared portentous.He had really meant it-he would have liked her to have nothing of her own but her pretty appearance.She had known she had too many ideas; she had more even than he had supposed, many more than she had expressed to him when he had asked her to marry him.Yes, she had been hypocritical; she had liked him so much; She had too many ideas for herself; but that was just what one married for, to share them with some one else.One couldn't pluck them up by the roots, though of course one might suppress them, be careful not to utter them.It had not been this, however, his objecting to her opinions; this had been nothing.She had no opinions-none that she would not have been eager to sacrifice in the satisfaction of feeling herself loved for it.What he had meant had been the whole thing-her character, the way she felt, the way she judged.This was what she had kept in reserve; this was what he had not known until he had found himself-with the door closed behind, as it were-set down face to face with it.She had a certain way of looking at life which he took as a personal offence.
Heaven knew that now at least it was a very humble, accommodating way!
The strange thing was that she should not have suspected from the first that his own had been so different.She had thought it so large, so enlightened, so perfectly that of an honest man and a gentleman.
Hadn't he assured her that he had no superstitions, no dull limitations, no prejudices that had lost their freshness? Hadn't he all the appearance of a man living in the open air of the world, indifferent to small considerations, caring only for truth and knowledge and believing that two intelligent people ought to look for them together and, whether they found them or not, find at least some happiness in the search? He had told her he loved the conventional; but there was a sense in which this seemed a noble declaration.In that sense, that of the love of harmony and order and decency and of all the stately offices of life, she went with him freely, and his warning had contained nothing ominous.But when, as the months had elapsed, she had followed him further and he had led her into the mansion of his own habitation, then, then she had seen where she really was.
