as she looked back, she
thought that she could understand.

She had been curiously young, curiously inexperienced. She had expected
life to go on as dawn for ever. Everyday light had filled her with
bleakness and disillusion. She had had childish fancies; that her
husband did not really love her; that she counted for nothing in his
life. Yet Sir Hugh had never changed, except that he very seldom made
love to her and that she saw less of him than during their engagement.
Sir Hugh was still quizzically tender, still all grace, all deference,
when he was there. And what wonder that he was little there; he had a
wide life; he was a brilliant man; she was a stupid young girl; in
looking back, no longer young, no longer stupid, Lady Channice thought
that she could see it all quite clearly. She had seemed to him a sweet,
good girl, and he cared for her and wanted a wife. He had hoped that by
degrees she would grow into a wise and capable woman, fit to help and
ornament his life. But she had not been wise or capable. She had been
lonely and unhappy, and that wide life of his had wearied and confused
her; the silence, the watching attitude of the girl were inadequate to
her married state, and yet she had nothing else to meet it with. She had
never before felt her youth and inexperience as oppressive, but they
oppressed her now. She had nothing to ask of the world and nothing to
give to it. What she did ask of life was not given to her, what she had
to give was not wanted. She was very unhappy.

Yet people were kind. In especial Lady Elliston was kind, the loveliest,
most sheltering, most understanding of all her guests or hostesses. Lady
Elliston and her cheerful, jocose husband, were Sir Hugh's nearest
friends and they took her in and made much of her. And one day when, in
a fit of silly wretchedness, Lady Elliston found her crying, she had put
her arms around her and kissed her and begged to know her grief and to
comfort it. Even thus taken by surprise, and even to one so kind, Amabel
could not tell that grief: deep in her was a reticence, a sense of
values austere and immaculate: she could not discuss her husband, even
with the kindest of friends. And she had nothing to tell, really, but of
herself, her own helplessness and deficiency. Yet, without her telling,
for all her wish that no one should guess, Lady Elliston did guess. Her
comfort had such wise meaning in it. She was ten years older than
Amabel. She knew all about t