His youth had attracted him to Gwenda and
his energy had driven him out of doors. And Mary had set herself,
secretly, insidiously, to destroy them.
It had taken her seven years.
For the first five years it had been hard work for Mary. It had meant,
for her body, an ignominious waiting and watching for the moment when
its appeal would be irresistible, for her soul a complete subservience
to her husband's moods, and for her mind perpetual attention to his
comfort, a thousand cares that had seemed to go unnoticed. But in the
sixth year they had begun to tell. Once Rowcliffe had made up his
mind that Gwenda couldn't be anything to him he had let go and through
sheer exhaustion had fallen more and more into his wife's hands, and
for the last two years her labor had been easy and its end sure.
She had him, bound to her bed and to her fireside.
He said and thought that he was happy. He meant that he was extremely
comfortable.
* * * * *
"Is your head very bad, Steven?"
He shook his head. It wasn't very bad, but he was worried. He was
worried about himself.
From time to time his old self rose against this new self that was
the slave of comfort. It made desperate efforts to shake off the
strangling lethargy. When he went about saying that he was getting
rusty, that he ought never to have left Leeds, and that it would do
him all the good in the world to go back there, he was saying what he
knew to be the truth.
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