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The
farm-hands would always do anything for Marie; Frank couldn't find
one so surly that he would not make an effort to please her. At
the bottom of his heart Frank knew well enough that if he could once
give up his grudge, his wife would come back to him. But he could
never in the world do that. The grudge was fundamental. Perhaps
he could not have given it up if he had tried. Perhaps he got more
satisfaction out of feeling himself abused than he would have got
out of being loved. If he could once have made Marie thoroughly
unhappy, he might have relented and raised her from the dust. But
she had never humbled herself. In the first days of their love
she had been his slave; she had admired him abandonedly. But the
moment he began to bully her and to be unjust, she began to draw
away; at first in tearful amazement, then in quiet, unspoken disgust.
The distance between them had widened and hardened. It no longer
contracted and brought them suddenly together. The spark of her
life went somewhere else, and he was always watching to surprise
it.


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