 the stamp of familiarity: the whole repelled her. What was the
meaning now first revealed to her in that countenance? The features had a
massive regularity; there was nothing grotesque, nothing on the surface
repulsive; yet, beholding the face as if it were that of a man unknown to her,
she felt that a whole world of natural antipathies was between it and her.
    It was the face of a man by birth and breeding altogether beneath her.
    Never had she understood that as now; never had she conceived so forcibly
the reason which made him and her husband and wife only in name. Suppose that
apparent sleep of his to be the sleep of death; he would pass from her
consciousness like a shadow from the field, leaving no trace behind. Their life
of union was a mockery; their married intimacy was an unnatural horror. He was
not of her class, not of her world; only by violent wrenching of the laws of
nature had they come together. She had spent years in trying to convince herself
that there were no such distinctions, that only an unworthy prejudice parted
class from class. One moment of true insight was worth more than all her
theorising on abstract principles. To be her equal this man must be born again,
of other parents, in other conditions of life. »I go back to London a mechanical
engineer in search of employment.« They were the truest words he had ever
uttered; they characterised him, classed him.
    She had no claims to aristocratic descent, but her parents were gentlefolk;
that is to say, they were both born in a position which encouraged personal
refinement rather than the contrary, which expected of them a certain education
in excess of life's barest need, which authorised them to use the service of
ruder men and women in order to secure to themselves a margin of life for life's
sake. Perhaps for three generations her ancestors could claim so much gentility;
it was more than enough to put a vast gulf between her and the Mutimers.
Favourable circumstances of upbringing had endowed her with delicacy of heart
and mind not inferior to that of any woman living; mated with an equal husband,
the children born of her might hope to take their place among the most beautiful
and the most intelligent. And her husband was a man incapable of understanding
her idlest thought.
    He opened his eyes, looked at her blankly for a moment, stirred his limbs to
make his position easier.
    Pouring rain in London streets. The cab drove eastward, but for no great
distance. Adela found herself alighting at a lodging-house
