its usual decorous formality; then gradually he became so changed that
she hardly knew him. That decorousness, that brightness, melted off what
lay behind, as frosty dew melts off grass. And her very soul contracted
within her, as if she had become identified with what he was seeing--a
something to be passed over, a very nothing. Yes, his was the face of
one looking at what was unintelligible, and therefore negligible; at
that which had no soul; at something of a different and inferior species
and of no great interest to a man. His face was like a soundless avowal
of some conclusion, so fixed and intimate that it must surely emanate
from the very core of him--be instinctive, unchangeable. This was
the real he! A man despising women! Her first thought was: And he's
married--what a fate! Her second: If he feels that, perhaps thousands of
men do! Am I and all women really what they think us? The conviction in
his stare--its through-and-through conviction--had infected her; and
she gave in to it for the moment, crushed. Then her spirit revolted with
such turbulence, and the blood so throbbed in her, that she could hardly
lie still. How dare he think her like that--a nothing, a bundle of
soulless inexplicable whims and moods and sensuality? A thousand times,
No! It was HE who was the soulless one, the dry, the godless one; who,
in his sickening superiority, could thus deny her, and with her all
women! That stare was as if he saw her--a doll tricked out in garments
labelled soul, spirit, rights, responsibilities, dignity, freedom--all
so many words. It was vile, it was horrible, that he should see her
thus! And a really terrific struggle began in her between the desire
to get up and cry this out, and the knowledge that it would be stupid,
undignified, even mad, to show her comprehension of what he would never
admit or even understand that he had revealed to her. And then a sort
of cynicism came to her rescue. What a funny thing was married life--to
have lived all these years with him, and never known what was at the
bottom of his heart! She had the feeling now that, if she went up to him