about primroses."

"No, I'm afraid I don't--thank you, Mrs. Sampson. One lump, please."

She had been coming to it. Of course, a very long time before this--very,
very far away, now an incredible memory, seemed the days when she had
loved him so passionately that she almost died with anxiety if he left her
for a single night. Almost too passionate it had been, perhaps. He himself
was not capable of passionate love, or, at any rate, had been quite
satisfied to be _not_ passionately in love with _her_. He pursued
other things--his career, his religion, his simple beneficence, his
health, his vigour. His love for his son was the most passionately
personal thing in him, and over that they might have met had he been able
to conceive her as a passionate being. Her ignorance of life--almost
complete when he had met her--had been but little diminished by her time
with him. She knew now, after all those years, little more of the world
and its terrors and blessings than she had known then. But she did know
that nothing in her had been satisfied. She knew now of what she was
capable, and it was perhaps the thought that he had, by taking her,
prevented her fulfilment and complete experience that caused her, more
than anything else, to hate him.

She very quickly discovered that he had married her for certain things--to
have children, to have a companion. He had soon found that the latter of
these he was not to obtain. She had in her none of the qualities that he
needed in a companion, and so he had, with complete good-nature and
kindliness, ceased to consider her. He should have married a bold
ambitious woman who would have wanted the things, that he wanted--a woman
something like Falk, his son. On the rare occasions when he analysed the
situation he realised this. He did not in any way vent his disappointment