"I don't think that would make any difference to Dick," she said.
She spoke lightly, her tone was void of all offence, but Quisanté left the room, frowning and vexed. She had seemed to rebuke him and to accuse him of not seeing or not understanding something that was plain to her. He had become very sensitive on this point. Left to himself, he had been a self-contented man, quite clear about what he meant to do, troubling very little about what he was, quite confident that he could reason from his own mind to the mind of his acquaintances with absolute safety. When he fell in love with May Gaston, however, part of her attraction for him had lain in his sense of a difference between them, of her grasp on things and on aspects of things which eluded him; in this mood he had been prepared to worship, to learn, to amend. These things for a little while he had done or attempted, and had been met by zealous efforts to the same end on her part. His great moments had been frequent then, and May had felt that the risky work she had undertaken might prosper and at last be crowned with success. As for some months back this idea of hers had been dying, even so Quisanté's humble mood died. Now his suspicious vanity saw blame of what he was, or even contempt of him, in every word by which she might seem to invite him to become anything different. Though she had declared herself on his side by the most vital action of her life, he imputed to her a leaning towards treachery; her heart was more with his critics than with him. Yet he did not become indifferent to her praise or her blame, but rather grew morbidly sensitive and exacting, intolerant of questioning and disliking even a smile. He loved her, depended on her, and valued her opinion; but she became in a certain sense, if not an enemy, yet a person to be conciliated, to be hoodwinked, to be tricked into a favourable view. Hence there crept into his bearing towards her just that laboured insincerity which she had never ceased to blame in his attitude towards the world at large. He showed her the truth about himself now only as it were by accident, only when he failed to perceive that the truth would not be to her liking. But this was often, and every time it happened it seemed to him as well as to her at once to widen the gulf between them and to move further away any artificial means of crossing it. Thus the new sense of self-dissatisfaction and self-distrust which had grown upon him centred round his wife and seemed to owe its origin to her.
On her side there came a sort of settled, resigned, not altogether unhumorous, despair. She saw that she had over-rated her power alike over him and over herself. She could not change what she hated in him, and she could not cease to hate it. She could neither make the normal level higher nor yet bear patiently with the normal lower level; the great moments would not become perpetual and the small moments grew more irritating and more humiliating. But the great moments recurred from time to time and never lost their charm. Thus she oscillated between the moods produced by an intense intellectual admiration on the one hand and an intense antipathy of the feelings on the other; and in this uncomfortable balancing she had the prospect of spending her life. Well, Aunt Maria had lived in it for years, and Aunt Maria could not be called an unhappy woman. If only Quisanté would not do anything too outrageous, she felt that she would be able to endure. Since she could not change, she must be content to compromise, to ignore—if only he would not drive her from that refuge too.
"I suppose she sees what the man is by now," said Lady Richard to Morewood, whom she had been trying to entice into sympathising with her over the scandalous treatment of the Crusade.
"My dear Lady Richard, she always saw what he is much better than you do, even better than I do. But it's one thing to see what a man is and quite another to see what effect his being it will have on yourself from time to time."
"What he's done about Dick and the Dean is so characteristic."
"For example," Morewood pursued, "you know what a bore is, but at one time he kills you, at another he faintly amuses you. You know what a Dean is" (he raised his voice so as to let the Dean, who was reading in the window, overhear); "at one time the abuse exasperates you, at another such splendid indifference to the progress of thought catches your fancy. No doubt Lady May experiences the same varieties of feeling towards her worthy husband."
"Well, I've done with him," said little Lady Richard. Morewood laughed.
"The rest of us haven't," he said, "and I don't think we ever shall till the fellow dies somehow effectively."
"What a blessing for poor May!" cried Lady Richard impulsively.