How well he had always remembered her words to him as they stood
face to face in the chilly whiteness of an English bridal chamber
in midwinter! "It's no use, dear, I don't want any of this sort of
thing. It seems to me coarse and stupid, and I don't want the
bother of a dozen babies. I married because I wanted the position
of a married woman, and a nice presentable man to go about with in
society. Besides, things were not satisfactory at home, and I
wanted a man to keep me, and all that. But I don't see why you
should get into such a state of mind about it. I will keep house,
and be perfectly good and amiable, and we can go about together, of
course; only I want to keep my own room."

And how well he remembered her as she stood there, shattering his
life with her cold, light words--a tall, slim girl, in her white
dinner dress! She had been very fair then, with a quantity of soft
flaxen hair, which shortly after she had taken to dyeing--a thing
he had always hated. She had a small, heart-shaped face, so light
in colour as to suggest anæmia, with a high, thin nose, of which
the nostrils were excessively pinched together, a short upper lip,
and a thick, quite colourless mouth, small when closed, when she
laughed opening wide far back to her throat, showing, as it seemed,
an infinite quantity of long, narrow, white, wolf-like teeth.

How hideous she had suddenly appeared to him in those moments, seen
through the dark waves of passion she rolled back upon him! In the
hot, rosy glow she had deliberately conjured up before his eyes of
love and love returned he had thought her beautiful. Now, as she
took the veil from her mean, base mind, it fell also from her
beauty, and he saw her ugly, as she really was, body and soul.
Stunned and amazed, loathing his own folly, his own blindness,