As she looked at them his boyhood rose before her; its dead innocence appealed to her comprehension and compassion.

She knew that he had been disappointed in his ambition.  Instead of being sent to Oxford he had been sent into business, that he might early support himself.  He had supported himself.  And he had stuck to the business that he might the better support Edith.

She could not deny him the virtue of unselfishness.

She remembered one Sunday, three weeks before their wedding-day, when she had stood alone with him in this room, at the closing of their happy day.  It was then that he had asked her why she cared for him, and she had answered:  “Because you are good.  You always have been good.”

And he had said (how it came back to her!), “And if I hadn’t always?  Wouldn’t you have cared then?”

She had answered, “I would have cared, but I couldn’t marry you.”

And he had turned away from her, and looked out of the window, keeping his back to her, and had stood so without speaking for a moment.  She had wondered what had come over him.

Now she knew.  He had not been good.  And she had married him.

At the recollection the thoughts she had quieted stirred again and stung her, and again she trampled them down.

She faced the question how she was going to build up the wedded life that her knowledge of him had laid low.  She told herself that, after all, much remained.  She had loved Walter for his unhappiness as well as for his goodness.  He had needed her, and she had felt that there was no other woman who could have borne his burden half so well.  Edith was too sweet to be thought of as a burden, but it could not be denied she weighed.  In marrying Walter she would lift half the weight.  Anne was strong, and she glorified in her strength.  That was what she was there for.

How much more was she prepared to do?  Keeping his house was nothing; Nanna had always kept it well.  Caring for Edith was nothing; she could not help but care for her.  She had promised Walter that she would be a good wife to him, and she had vowed to herself that she would live her spiritual life apart.

Was that being a good wife to him?  To divorce her soul, her best self, from him?  If she confined her duty to the preservation of the mere material tie, what would she make of herself?  Of him?

It came to her that his need of her was deeper and more spiritual than that.  She argued that there must be something fine in him, or he never would have appreciated her.  That other woman didn’t count; she had thrust herself on him.  When it came to choosing, he had chosen a spiritual woman! (Anne had no doubt that she was what she aspired to be.) And since all things were divinely ordered, Walter’s choice was really God’s will.  God’s hand had led him to her.

It had been a blow to Anne’s pride to realise that she had married—­spiritually—­beneath her.  Her pride now recovered wonderfully, seeing in this very inequality its opportunity.  She beheld herself superbly seated on an eminence, her spiritual opulence supplying Walter’s poverty.  Spiritually, she said, it might also be more blessed to give than to receive.