"
He strode out of the house.
After that he never told her when he was going up to Garthdale toward
nightfall. He was sometimes driven to lie. It was up Rathdale he was
going, or to Greffington, or to smoke a pipe with Ned Alderson, or to
turn in for a game of billiards at the village club.
And whenever he lied to her she saw through him. She was prepared for
the lie. She said to herself, "He is going to see Gwenda. He can't
keep away from her."
And then she remembered what Alice had said to her. "You'll know some
day."
She knew.
LIII
And with her knowledge there came a curious calm.
She no longer watched and worried Rowcliffe. She knew that no wife
ever kept her husband by watching and worrying him.
She was aware of danger and she faced it with restored complacency.
For Mary was a fount of sensual wisdom. Rowcliffe was ill. And
from his illness she inferred his misery, and from his misery his
innocence.
She told herself that nothing had happened, that she knew nothing that
she had not known before. She saw that her mistake had been in showing
that she knew it. That was to admit it, and to admit it was to give it
a substance, a shape and color it had never had and was not likely to
have.
And Mary, having perceived her blunder, set herself to repair it.
She knew how. Under all his energy she had discerned in her husband a
love of bodily ease, and a capacity for laziness, undeveloped because
perpetually frustrated.
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