IV

March's irony fell harmless from the children's preoccupation with their
own affairs, but he knew that his wife felt it, and this added to the
bitterness which prompted it. He blamed her for letting her provincial
narrowness prevent his accepting Fulkerson's offer quite as much as if he
had otherwise entirely wished to accept it. His world, like most worlds,
had been superficially a disappointment. He was no richer than at the
beginning, though in marrying he had given up some tastes, some
preferences, some aspirations, in the hope of indulging them later, with
larger means and larger leisure. His wife had not urged him to do it; in
fact, her pride, as she said, was in his fitness for the life he had
renounced; but she had acquiesced, and they had been very happy together.
That is to say, they made up their quarrels or ignored them.

They often accused each other of being selfish and indifferent, but she
knew that he would always sacrifice himself for her and the children; and
he, on his part, with many gibes and mockeries, wholly trusted in her.
They had grown practically tolerant of each other's disagreeable traits;
and the danger that really threatened them was that they should grow too
well satisfied with themselves, if not with each other. They were not
sentimental, they were rather matter-of-fact in their motives; but they
had both a sort of humorous fondness for sentimentality. They liked to
play with the romantic, from the safe vantage-ground of their real
practicality, and to divine the poetry of the commonplace. Their peculiar
point of view separated them from most other people, with whom their
means of self-comparison were not so good since their marriage as before.
Then they had travelled and seen much of the world, and they had formed
tastes which they had not always been able to indulge, but of which they
felt that the possession reflected distinction on them. It enabled them