Page 450 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

led two lives—one in the body, and one in the spirit—and
that with her spiritual existence her husband had no share.
This discovery alarmed her, but then she smiled at it. ‘As
if Maurice could be expected to take interest in all my sil-
ly fancies,’ said she; and, despite a harassing thought that
these same fancies were not foolish, but were the best and
brightest portion of her, she succeeded in overcoming her
uneasiness. ‘A man’s thoughts are different from a woman’s,’
she said; ‘he has his business and his worldly cares, of which
a woman knows nothing. I must comfort him, and not wor-
ry him with my follies.’
As for Maurice, he grew sometimes rather troubled in
his mind. He could not understand his wife. Her nature was
an enigma to him; her mind was a puzzle which would not
be pieced together with the rectangular correctness of or-
dinary life. He had known her from a child, had loved her
from a child, and had committed a mean and cruel crime
to obtain her; but having got her, he was no nearer to the
mystery of her than before. She was all his own, he thought.
Her golden hair was for his fingers, her lips were for his ca-
ress, her eyes looked love upon him alone. Yet there were
times when her lips were cold to his kisses, and her eyes
looked disdainfully upon his coarser passion. He would
catch her musing when he spoke to her, much as she would
catch him sleeping when she read to him—but she awoke
with a start and a blush at her forgetfulness, which he never
did. He was not a man to brood over these things; and, after
some reflective pipes and ineffectual rubbings of his head,
he ‘gave it up”. How was it possible, indeed, for him to solve