It was the end of one more acute stage in their progressive discord.  By keeping at home for a fortnight.  Monica soothed her husband and obtained some repose for her own nerves.  But she could no longer affect a cordial reconciliation; caresses left her cold, and Widdowson saw that his company was never so agreeable to her as solitude.  When they sat together, both were reading.  Monica found more attraction in books as her life grew more unhappy.  Though with reluctance Widdowson had consented to a subscription at Mudie’s, and from the new catalogues she either chose for herself, necessarily at random, or by the advice of better-read people, such as she met at Mrs. Cosgrove’s.  What modern teaching was to be got from these volumes her mind readily absorbed.  She sought for opinions and arguments which were congenial to her mood of discontent, all but of revolt.

Sometimes the perusal of a love-story embittered her lot to the last point of endurance.  Before marriage, her love-ideal had been very vague, elusive; it found scarcely more than negative expression, as a shrinking from the vulgar or gross desires of her companions in the shop.  Now that she had a clearer understanding of her own nature, the type of man correspondent to her natural sympathies also became clear.  In every particular he was unlike her husband.  She found a suggestion of him in books; and in actual life, already, perhaps something more than a suggestion.  Widdowson’s jealousy, in so far as it directed itself against her longing for freedom, was fully justified; this consciousness often made her sullen when she desired to express a nobler indignation; but his special prejudice led him altogether astray, and in free resistance on this point she found the relief which enabled her to bear a secret self-reproach.  Her refusal to repeat the substance of Barfoot’s conversation was, in some degree, prompted by a wish for the continuance of his groundless fears.  By persevering in suspicion of Barfoot, he afforded her a firm foothold in their ever-renewed quarrels.

A husband’s misdirected jealousy excites in the wife derision and a sense of superiority; more often than not, it fosters an unsuspected attachment, prompts to a perverse pleasure in misleading.  Monica became aware of this; in her hours of misery she now and then gave a harsh laugh, the result of thoughts not seriously entertained, but tempting the fancy to recklessness.  What, she asked herself again, would be the end of it all?  Ten years hence, would she have subdued her soul to a life of weary insignificance, if not of dishonour?  For it was dishonour to live with a man she could not love, whether her heart cherished another image or was merely vacant.  A dishonour to which innumerable women submitted, a dishonour glorified by social precept, enforced under dread penalties.

But she was so young, and life abounds in unexpected changes.

CHAPTER XX