to the black and glittering Mrs. Sigourney, and to that strange, uncivilized musician from the middle west. About them all, there had been a spectacular quality, an undercurrent of fierce vitality, of outward distinction from the mob which appeared to have fascinated him.
She did not flatter herself that he had married her through desire; yet from the moment of their marriage he had been passionate after a fashion which shocked her. It was confusing to find that a man who was so polite and indifferent, so free from the little tendernesses which, to be honest, she had never expected, could at times display a passion so fierce and unexpected. It was as if in some way, love, passion, desire—she could not in his case define it precisely—were isolated, a thing apart.
There were reasons enough why she had married him. He was a great match; women would have desired him even if he had not been rich. And, she reflected with astonishing coldness, to have won him in the face of so much competition was a triumph worth paying for with much unhappiness. It was a victory over women who hated her and had sought with all the bag of their nasty feminine tricks to outwit her. She had married him too because she had come very nearly to the conclusion that she could never fall passionately in love with any man and that, therefore, it was far better to choose an interesting husband than a dull one. It was impossible, she felt, for love to survive such a passion as hers for dissection and analysis; love could not stand being pinned down and pulled apart. She did not then expect great love, and for the rest of it, Callendar had fascinated her as no other man had ever done, because he had always eluded her, just as he was eluding her now that he was her husband. In a sense, he offered her material vigorous enough to last a lifetime.
More than once in the midst of such reflections there returned to her the memory of the night when the raw young creature, whom she now thought of as "that musician," had fainted. She
