Mathilde had been wrong in telling Wayne that her mother had gone upstairs in obedience to an impulse of kindness.

She had gone to quiet a small, gnawing anxiety that had been with her all the day, a haunting, elusive, persistent impression that something was wrong between her and her husband.
All the day, as she had gone about from one thing to another, her mind had been diligently seeking in some event of the outside world an explanation of a slight obscuration of his spirit; but her heart, more egotistical, had stoutly insisted that the cause must lie in her.

Did he love her less?
Was she losing her charm for him?
Were five years the limit of a human relation like theirs?
Was she to watch the dying down of his flame, and try to shelter and fan it back to life as she had seen so many other women do?
Or was the trouble only that she had done something to wound his aloof and sensitive spirit, seldom aloof to her?
Their intimate life had never been a calm one.

Farron's interests were concentrated, and his temperament was jealous.

A woman couldn't, as Adelaide sometimes had occasion to say to herself, keep men from making love to her; she did not always want to.