Lili revealed herself to him during these months at sea and in New Zealand, and especially in Australia, when she became wrapped up in her own mantle of brooding and petulance and terror, as a being almost entirely devoid of any real sympathy. Utterly shallow, he told himself. Utterly selfish.
Of course Jerome didn’t begin to appreciate the unhappiness of her condition. He didn’t know anything about such things, and only saw stark qualities. In spite of rallying efforts, his feeling for her cooled and cooled, till at length there was little sentiment of any sort left. He even developed latent subtleties in the way of avoiding her, and finally assured himself it was a matter of profound thanksgiving that their marriage wasn’t real, but only a word in the sand.
Yet he wondered, sometimes, too, whether they might have been happier together if there had been a license, and if he had bought the wedding ring.... For he had loved her once, very extravagantly, and it bewildered him when he asked himself where his love for her had gone—what had happened to it.
Well, here were more “supreme emotions” to grapple with, certainly.
Almost nothing notable had befallen him, he always felt, during his existence previous to this amazing year; but once the era of notable experiences set in, each seemed to make in him a permanent and reorganizing difference. Jerome did a lot of thinking these days. His adventures were coming more and more to stand for elemental phases of human relationship. He thought about Lili and his feeling for Lili; thought about his strange and fugitive dip into matrimony; saw his brief first happiness grow tarnished. When their baby was born, what then? Would they go on living together like this all the rest of their lives? A child would mean a new responsibility—another obligation that couldn’t be dodged....
“I guess I’m in for it,” he muttered, with real, disillusioned grimness. Yes—very darkly in for it. And this was what had come of his unshakable desire for—a hearth and kiddies.
Sometimes his consciousness of the dilemma attained rather acute poignancy, and seemed on occasions, often trifling enough, to dramatize itself—each repetition widening the gulf a little. One night they had quarrelled, and she had pouted and wept; then, all at once she had fallen asleep.
He watched her as she lay, undried tears on her cheeks. Her eyelids were dropped like perfectly blank curtains, robbing the face of its most essential expression. There was a relaxed, earthy quality about the moulding of all the features, such as even the most spiritual faces sometimes show in sleep. As Jerome stood looking down at her, he was afflicted in a breath with compassion and disgust. Poor Lili looked so utterly and helplessly common: how had he ever deceived himself to the extent of fancying he really loved her? He remembered now with merely a feeling of cold repugnance how naïvely he had begged her, in the old days, to marry him. He judged and condemned himself, it is true, from the standpoint of a subsequent development; but this was a nicety which didn’t now enter into his scope of vision. Jerome blamed Lili, but he also blamed himself; and it was with entire frankness he realized his feeling for this woman, nominally his wife, was a feeling of steadily entrenching distaste.
What a strange and tragic predicament to have wriggled into!