He loved
her, depended on her, and valued her opinion; but she became in a
certain sense, if not an enemy, yet a person to be conciliated, to be
hoodwinked, to be tricked into a favourable view. Hence there crept into
his bearing towards her just that laboured insincerity which she had
never ceased to blame in his attitude towards the world at large. He
showed her the truth about himself now only as it were by accident, only
when he failed to perceive that the truth would not be to her liking.
But this was often, and every time it happened it seemed to him as well
as to her at once to widen the gulf between them and to move further
away any artificial means of crossing it. Thus the new sense of
self-dissatisfaction and self-distrust which had grown upon him centred
round his wife and seemed to owe its origin to her.
On her side there came a sort of settled, resigned, not altogether
unhumorous, despair. She saw that she had over-rated her power alike
over him and over herself. She could not change what she hated in him,
and she could not cease to hate it.
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