e
ever hold her own with such people? He would talk with them, paint
them, dine with them, while she sat at home--Carrie's nurse, and the
domestic drudge.

And yet she was of that type which represents perhaps the most
ambitious element in the lower middle class. It had been a great
matter that she, a small farmer's daughter, should pass her
examinations and rise to be a teacher in Miss Mason's school. She had
had her triumphs and conceits; had been accustomed to think herself
clever and successful, to hold her head high amongst her schoolmates.
Whereas now, if she tried to talk of art or books, she was hotly aware
that everything she said was, in John's eyes, pretentious or
absurd. He was comparing her with others all the time, with men
and women--women especially--in whose presence he felt himself as
diffident as she did in his. He was thinking of ladies in velvet
dresses and diamonds, who could talk wittily of pictures and theatres
and books, who could amuse him and distract him. And meanwhile _she_
went about in her old stuff dress, her cotton apron and rolled-up
sleeves, cooking and washing and cleaning--for her child and for him.
She felt through every nerve that he was constantly aware of details
of dress or _menage_ that jarred upon him; she suspected miserably
that all her little personal ways and habits seemed to him ugly and
common; and the suspicion showed itself in pride or _brusquerie_.

Meanwhile, if she had been _restful_, if he could only have forgotten
his cares in her mere youth and prettiness, Fenwick would have been
easily master of his discontents. For he was naturally of a warm,
sensuous temper. Had the woman understood her own arts, she could have
held him.

But she was not restful, she was exacting and self-conscious; and,
moreover, a certain new growth of Puritanism in her repelled him.
While he had been passing under the transforming influences of
an all-questioning thought and culture, she had been turning to
Evangelical religion for consolation. There was a new minister in a
Baptist chapel a mile or two away, of whom she talked, whose services
she attended. The very mention of him presently became a boredom
to Fenwick. The new influence had no effect upon her jealousies and
discontents; but it re-enforced a natural asceticism, and weakened
whatever power she possessed of playing on a husband's passion.
Meanwhile, Fenwick was partly aware of her state of mind, and far
from happy himself.