When they married, she had such arrears of living to make up: her days had
been as bare as the whitewashed school-room where she forced innutritious
facts upon reluctant children. His coming had broken in on the slumber of
circumstance, widening the present till it became the encloser of remotest
chances. But imperceptibly the horizon narrowed. Life had a grudge against
her: she was never to be allowed to spread her wings.
At first the doctors had said that six weeks of mild air would set him
right; but when he came back this assurance was explained as having of
course included a winter in a dry climate. They gave up their pretty
house, storing the wedding presents and new furniture, and went to
Colorado. She had hated it there from the first. Nobody knew her or cared
about her; there was no one to wonder at the good match she had made, or
to envy her the new dresses and the visiting-cards which were still a
surprise to her. And he kept growing worse. She felt herself beset with
difficulties too evasive to be fought by so direct a temperament. She
still loved him, of course; but he was gradually, undefinably ceasing to
be himself. The man she had married had been strong, active, gently
masterful: the male whose pleasure it is to clear a way through the
material obstructions of life; but now it was she who was the protector,
he who must be shielded from importunities and given his drops or his
beef-juice though the skies were falling.
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