rriage consists in the effect of the man's mind
upon the woman's, shut up with him in the closest intimacy day and
night, and all the time imbibing his poisoned thoughts. Beth's womanly
grace pleaded with her continually not to hurt her husband since he
meant no offence, not to damp his spirits even when they took a form
so distasteful to her. To check him was to offend him and provoke a
scene for nothing, since his taste was not to be improved; and she
would have to have checked him perpetually, and made a mere nag of
herself; for to talk in this way to her, to tell her objectionable
stories, and harp on depravity of all kinds, was his one idea of
pleasurable conversation. It was seldom, therefore, that she
remonstrated--especially in those early days when she had not as yet
perceived that by tacitly acquiescing she was lending herself to
inevitable corruption.

Just at that time, too, she did not trouble herself much about
anything. She was entirely absorbed in her new object in life--to get
the work done, to make the money, to pay her mother with interest;
there was continual exaltation of spirit in the endeavour. Every
moment that she could safely secure, she spent in her secret chamber,
hard at work. Her outlook was on the sky above, for ever changing; on
the gay garden below, whence light airs wafted the fragrance of
flowers from time to time, to her delight; and on a gentle green
ascent, covered and crowned with trees, which shut out the world
beyond. Here there was a colony of rooks, where the birds were busy
all day long sometimes, and from which they were sometimes absent from
early morning till sundown, when they came back cawing by ones and
twos and threes, a long straggling procession of them, their dark
iridescent forms with broad black wings outspread, distinct and
decorative, against the happy blue. Beth loved the birds, and even as
she worked she watched them, their housekeepings and comings and
goings; and heard their talk; and often as she worked she looked out
at the fair prospect and up at the sky hopefully, and vowed again to
accomplish one act of justice at all events. She stopped her regular
studies at this time, because she conceived them to be for her own
mere personal benefit, while the task which she had set herself was
for a better purpose. But, although she did not study as had been her
wont, while she sewed she occupied her mind in a way that was much
more beneficial to it than the purpos