While she watched him she recalled vaguely that she had once thought the latent brutality in his face an expression of power.

How young she had been when she married him! How inconceivably ignorant! Yet at twenty years she had imagined herself wise enough to judge a man.

She had deluded herself with the sanctified fallacy that mere instinct would guide her aright--that her marriage would be protected from disaster by the infallible impulse which she had mistaken for love.
"I wonder," said George with a suddenness that startled her out of her musing--"I wonder if it can be Winston Camp!" And Gabriella, who had forgotten Florrie, looked up to remark absentmindedly: "Winston Camp?
You mean the man who dined here last winter and couldn't eat anything but nuts ?" In the months that followed George did not mention Florrie again, and if he pursued his investigations into the obscure sources of her livelihood, his researches did not lead him back in the direction of Gabriella.

But, from the day of Florrie's visit, it seemed to Gabriella, when she thought of it afterwards, his casual indifference began to develop into brutal neglect.

Not that she regretted his affection, or even his politeness, not that she cared in the least what his manner was--this she made quite plain to herself--but her passion to see life clearly, to test experience, to weigh events, brought her almost breathlessly round again to the question, "What does it mean?
Is there something hidden?
Am I still the poor abject fool that Jane was or am I beginning really to be myself ?" "You aren't looking well, Gabriella," said Mrs.Fowler at breakfast one morning when George, as she confided afterwards to Patty, had behaved unspeakably to his wife before his father came down.