After talking to her the girl had felt that she might allow herself to be happy if only George would change back into his old way.
Four months ago, at the beginning of her marriage, she had told herself that she needed only the daily intimacy of life to make her understand him.

Now, after living with him, she felt that she was growing to understand him less every hour--that the relation which ought to have brought them spiritually closer, had ended by thrusting them to an incalculable distance from each other.

Of the nervous reactions which he had suffered she knew nothing.

All she saw clearly was that the widening breach between them would soon become impassable unless it could be filled by their new love for the child.

The power to hold him must slip from her hands to the child's, and she was more than ready, she was even eager, to relinquish it.