ess lovely. This was the
first germ of Hetty's unhappiness. It had been very hard for her in the
beginning to believe herself loved: now all her old incredulity returned
with fourfold strength; and now it was not met as then by constant and
vehement evidence to conquer it. Here again, had Hetty been like other
women, she might have been spared her suffering. Had it been possible
for her to demand, to even invite, she would have won from her husband,
at any instant, all that her anxiety could have asked; but it was not
possible. She simply went on silently, day after day, watching her
husband more intently; keeping record, in her morbid feeling, of every
moment, every look, every word which she misapprehended. Beyond this
morbidness of misapprehension, there was no other morbidness in Hetty's
state. She did not pine or grieve; she only began slowly to wonder what
she could do for Eben now. Her sense of loss and disappointment, in that
she had borne him no children, began to weigh more heavily upon her. "If
I were mother of his children," she said to herself, "it would not
make so much difference if I did grow old and ugly. He would have the
children to give him pleasure." "I don't see what there is left for me
to do," she said again and again. Sometimes she made pathetic attempts
to change the simplicity of her dress. "Perhaps if I wore better
clothes, I should look younger," she thought. But the result was not
satisfactory. Her severe style had always been so essentially her own
that any departure from it only made her look still more altered. All
this undercurrent of annoyance and distress added continually to the
change in her face: gradually its expression grew more grave; she smiled
less frequently; had fits of abstraction and reverie, which she had
never been known to have before.

In a vague way, Doctor Eben observed these, and wondered what Hetty was
thinking about; but he never asked. Often they drove for a whole day
together, without a dozen words being spoken; but the doctor was buried
in meditations upon his patients, and did not dislike the silence. Hetty
did not realize that the change here was more in her than in him: in the
old days it had been she who talked, not the doctor; now that she was
silent, he went on with his trains of thought undisturbed, and was
as content as before, for she was by his side. He felt her presence
perpetually, even when he gave no sign of doing so.

Many months went by in this