And so the new life began. A few months after the wedding they went to live in a narrow street in the great city, away from all the dear lovely hills and fields and sky that had hitherto made Milly’s world. She was surprised to find that the dreary outlook on brick and stone affected her like a physical blow, and that she missed familiar voices strangely. She had often and often thought that she would be willing to live with Norton in a desert, and forego all other companionship than his, which necessarily must be satisfying. Was it? Gradually, very gradually, but surely, a sinking of the heart, a gnawing homesickness began to take possession of her—the homesickness of one transplanted in body and mind to an alien soil; a feeling fiercely combated, fiercely denied, yet conquering insidiously. To many women—to most women, perhaps—there is no medium between worshiping and delicately despising the man they love. They must either look up or down; anything but a level view, with clear eyes meeting, and the honest admission: Dear friend, my insufficiency balances thine. What thou art not to me, that other thing I am not to thee.
But it is torture not to be able to look up! The sense of superiority is only a sting.
Milly took life with intense earnestness. She could not understand Norton’s light, jocular way of looking at things; he cared for nothing “improving,” he simply wanted recreation. He loved her—yes, as much, she thought, sadly, as he could have loved any woman, but not, oh, not as she loved! She missed so much, so much! Each day brought a subtle shock of disappointment with it, a miserable feeling of loss. What could she do about it? She tried vainly to adjust her vision to the man’s point of view. Her husband seemed to her shallow, coarse, with no high standard of honor. It must be her mission to elevate him.
The more unsatisfied her mind became, the more her heart endeavored to make up for it. “You are not what I dreamed—but kiss me, kiss me more passionately that I may forget it!” was the continued inner cry. But kisses do not grow more passionate under the insistent claim.
She prayed for him with a hysterical uplifting of the spirit, followed by fathomless exhaustion and depression. He was always very, very kind to her when she wept—and very glad to get away.
She relapsed into an obedient endurance, a patient and uncomplaining disapproval.
There seemed to be nothing in him of the man she had married except a certain sweet boyishness that had always been one of his charms, and which showed at times through everything, and a bright, yet delicate kindness which other people liked, although to her it had no depth. Sometimes she felt a little envious of his ease with others.
“How you talked to Mrs. Catherwood to-night,” she said one evening after the guests had gone. “You quite monopolized her. I wonder what she thought of you!”
“Oh, that was all right!” he answered somewhat absently. Then he looked up with a smile. “What do you think? I found that she came from the town I used to live in. I knew her sister well. We went back over old times.”
“You never talk to me about them.”