But Lily shied, mentally, at the fatal word "imagination," the thing which had so often been pointed out to her as a dangerous pitfall.
Kind old aunts of Nicholas, or young married women who, nevertheless, were for the most part older than herself, asked Lily directly or indirectly whether she was happy, and she always assented readily enough.
She had been told that certain things constituted happiness, had been trained to accept her values ready-made, and was consequently able to enjoy with placidity those things which her natural instincts, long since stifled and overlain, would have held in a quite different estimate to that of the people surrounding her.
On Sundays Nicholas was with her all day, and very often they went into the country from Saturday to Monday.
For the first few months after her marriage Lily went to church every Sunday as she had always done, and Nicholas accompanied her. She could hardly have said when it was that she first became aware of his attitude towards religion.
"I wouldn't interfere with anybody's faith, my dear, least of all with yours," said Nicholas, thereby causing his wife, for the first time, to ask herself in what her faith consisted.
"Do you only go to church to please me, then, Nicholas?"
"I like to go anywhere with you, darling."
"But tell me what do you think about religion?"
"I don't know that I know very much about it, my dear. The old aunt who brought me up was a Presbyterian, as I think I told you. I had a good deal of church-going to put up with, as a small lad, and Sunday was a very dull day, when I mightn't play with my toys or get my clothes dirty, and that's pretty well all I know about it."