It was over the chess-board that they first began to discover their extensive difficulties of sympathy.  Mr. Britling’s play was characterised by a superficial brilliance, much generosity and extreme unsoundness; he always moved directly his opponent had done so—­and then reflected on the situation.  His reflection was commonly much wiser than his moves.  Mrs. Britling was, as it were, a natural antagonist to her husband; she was as calm as he was irritable.  She was never in a hurry to move, and never disposed to make a concession.  Quietly, steadfastly, by caution and deliberation, without splendour, without error, she had beaten him at chess until it led to such dreadful fits of anger that he had to renounce the game altogether.  After every such occasion he would be at great pains to explain that he had merely been angry with himself.  Nevertheless he felt, and would not let himself think (while she concluded from incidental heated phrases), that that was not the complete truth about the outbreak.

Slowly they got through the concealments of that specious explanation.  Temperamentally they were incompatible.

They were profoundly incompatible.  In all things she was defensive.  She never came out; never once had she surprised him halfway upon the road to her.  He had to go all the way to her and knock and ring, and then she answered faithfully.  She never surprised him even by unkindness.  If he had a cut finger she would bind it up very skilfully and healingly, but unless he told her she never discovered he had a cut finger.  He was amazed she did not know of it before it happened.  He piped and she did not dance.  That became the formula of his grievance.  For several unhappy years she thwarted him and disappointed him, while he filled her with dumb inexplicable distresses.  He had been at first so gay an activity, and then he was shattered; fragments of him were still as gay and attractive as ever, but between were outbreaks of anger, of hostility, of something very like malignity.  Only very slowly did they realise the truth of their relationship and admit to themselves that the fine bud of love between them had failed to flower, and only after long years were they able to delimit boundaries where they had imagined union, and to become—­allies.  If it had been reasonably possible for them to part without mutual injury and recrimination they would have done so, but two children presently held them, and gradually they had to work out the broad mutual toleration of their later relations.  If there was no love and delight between them there was a real habitual affection and much mutual help.  She was proud of his steady progress to distinction, proud of each intimation of respect he won; she admired and respected his work; she recognised that he had some magic, of liveliness and unexpectedness that was precious and enviable.  So far as she could help him she did.  And even when he knew that there was nothing behind it, that it was indeed little more than an