But these few words which she believed would calm the irritation of her son-in-law, had on the contrary exasperated him; he left her, furious.
“I do not understand your husband at all,” she said to her daughter. “Will you not explain to me what the matter is with him?”
How could she give her mother the explanation that she could not give herself? Having reached an unfathomable abyss, she dared not even lean over to look into its depths; and instead of going on in the path where she was pledged in spite of herself, she made every effort to return, or at least to stop.
What good would it do to find out why he was so peculiar, and what it was that he took so much pains to conceal? This could only be idle curiosity on her part, for which she would be punished sooner or later.
Turning these thoughts over continually in her mind she lost her gayety, her power to resist blows of fate, such as the small trials of life, which formerly made her courageous; her vigorous elasticity sunk under the heavy weight with which it was charged, and her smiling eyes now more often expressed anxiety than happiness and confidence.
In spite of her watchfulness over herself she was not able to hide the change from Saniel, for it manifested itself in everything—in her face formerly so open, but which now bore the imprint of a secret sadness; in her concentrated manner, in her silence and abstraction.
What was the matter with her? He questioned her, and she replied with the prudence that she used in all her conversation with him. He examined her medically, but found nothing to indicate a sickly condition which would justify the change in her.
If she did not wish to answer his questions, and he had the proof that she did not wish to; if, on the other hand, she was not ill, and he was convinced that she was not—there must be something serious the matter to make the woman whom but lately he read so easily become an enigma that made him uneasy.
And this thing—if it were that whose crushing weight he himself carried on his bent shoulders? She divined, she understood, if not all, at least a part of the truth.
What an extraordinary situation was hers, and one which might truly destroy her reason.