dwelt on the prospect of relieving the weight and perhaps the sadness
with which great tasks lie on him who has to achieve them?-- And that
such weight pressed on Mr. Casaubon was only plainer than before.

All these are crushing questions; but whatever else remained the same,
the light had changed, and you cannot find the pearly dawn at noonday.
The fact is unalterable, that a fellow-mortal with whose nature you are
acquainted solely through the brief entrances and exits of a few
imaginative weeks called courtship, may, when seen in the continuity of
married companionship, be disclosed as something better or worse than
what you have preconceived, but will certainly not appear altogether
the same. And it would be astonishing to find how soon the change is
felt if we had no kindred changes to compare with it. To share
lodgings with a brilliant dinner-companion, or to see your favorite
politician in the Ministry, may bring about changes quite as rapid: in
these cases too we begin by knowing little and believing much, and we
sometimes end by inverting the quantities.

Still, such comparisons might mislead, for no man was more incapable of
flashy make-believe than Mr. Casaubon: he was as genuine a character as
any ruminant animal, and he had not actively assisted in creating any
illusions about himself. How was it that in the weeks since her
marriage, Dorothea had not distinctly observed but felt with a stifling
depression, that the large vistas and wide fresh air which she had
dreamed of finding in her husband's mind were replaced by anterooms and
winding passages which seemed to lead nowhither? I suppose it was that
in courtship everything is regarded as provisional and preliminary, and
the smallest sample of virtue or accomplishment is taken to guarantee
delightful stores which the broad leisure of marriage will reveal. But
the door-sill of marriage once crossed, expectation is concentrated on
the present. Having once embarked on your marital voyage, it is
impossible not to be aware that you make no way and that the sea is not
within sight--that, in fact, you are exploring an enclosed basin.

In their conversation before marriage, Mr. Casaubon had often dwelt on
some explanation or questionable detail of which Dorothea did not see
the bearing; but such imperfect coherence seemed due to the brokenness
of their intercourse, and, supported by her faith in their future, she
had listened with fervid patience to a rec