He explained to her new and interesting cases which came under his eye, entirely unaware that all her enthusiasm for his profession had its origin in his arm across her shoulders. It was when he was discussing his work that Stephen was at his best.
His marriage, consummated at the end of his course, seemed to him an incredible piece of good fortune. A poor man from a little coal region town, he had none of the wealth or influence which he had always supposed must, even in America, be the contribution of the bridegroom to an alliance with a name so important. He visited before his graduation the gray house in Harrisburg and saw in the city the solid business block, and outside the city some of the farms which poured their revenues into Hilda's lap. He believed himself to be lifted by fortune high above the average of mankind; not only above the great level mass at the bottom of the social pyramid and the dull, superimposed layer which he had learned to call bourgeois, but also above the stratum of educated men and women who lacked comfortable wealth, and above the stratum of rich men and women who had no intellectual pleasures. He had, he believed for a month after he was married, everything.
He began then dimly to discern the chasm which divided him from Hilda. His keen mind, delivered from its first blindness, could no longer fail to see that her ignorance was not the result of a poor education, but of natural inability to learn. She failed to grasp the simplest of scientific principles; she could not understand the structure of the eye or remember its chief parts; she made Stephen ridiculous by misquoting him.
He dwelt a little longer in the paradise which he had created for himself. It was absurd to require in an exquisite creature like Hilda the interests natural to an older woman or to a student. Compared with the young women whom he had known in the University, she was immeasurably attractive and she could not be expected to possess every perfection.
It was not long, however, before he understood clearly that her dullness to the passion of his life, his profession, was due not only to ignorance but to indifference. Their first quarrel was precipitated by his announcement of his plans for the future.
"New York is the place for us to live. Each country has one center; England has London, France has Paris, and the United States has New York." Stephen often spoke in this sententious fashion in his youth. "There the world currents—"
"But we are not going to live in New York," said Hilda quickly.
"Why not?"