"I daresay," smiled Lily.
She went on smiling, and Nicholas went on laughing. His laughter had long ago got upon her nerves, but she did not own to herself that this was the case.
Even when her amusement was genuine, she never found it easy to prolong her laughter to the extent of his. Very often, her amusement was not genuine at all.
Nicholas had a fund of anecdotes, quotations, and good stories, some of which he retailed over-frequently. Many of the stories were witty; one or two, to the daughter of Philip Stellenthorpe, appeared to be merely coarse. It seemed to her that Nicholas was totally unable to distinguish between wit, even if admittedly "improper," and the form of rather gross vulgarity that claims to be funny merely on the grounds of its vulgarity.
Sometimes she despised herself for making the distinction, which with her was entirely instinctive. Nicholas, however, so far as she could see, did not discover that she made any distinction at all in her appreciation of his sallies.
His perceptions, acute in some directions, appeared to Lily to be astonishingly blunt in others. Whenever he perceived in her any sign of physical weakness or fatigue, it touched her sharply and always afresh, but it always surprised her. At times, when his simplicity and enthusiasm were most in evidence, she welcomed in herself a rush of tenderness for him.
His frequent demonstrations of affection she accepted with a sort of passive pleasure, as might an affectionate child, but she dwelt little on the subject of outer demonstrations in her own thoughts, aware that Nicholas, disappointed, had at first thought her unawakened, and then frigid.
There were many thoughts, indeed, upon which she lacked courage to dwell in her resolute suppression of the lurking consciousness of an irrevocable mistake.
She hoped that she might have a child, and then, forlornly, that repeated disappointment and anxiety might not alienate Nicholas's love for her, which she knew subconsciously, to be the thing in him that she cared for most.
Nearly four years after her marriage she had a long illness, and once more the hope of motherhood was taken from her.