especially not to let her see that they all thought her not quite, really not quite. . . . Her footfall was heavy, her voice not high-pitched enough; in everything that she did or said they marked that sometimes infinitesimal difference which betrays a difference of station. He had not failed to see it, but his pride had lain low and had never allowed them to notice that he saw it, because he thought it so small of them, so small-souled, that they could not blind themselves to that infinitesimal difference between Mathilde and themselves, yes, because he considered even their assiduous amiability small-souled. They showed it her so graciously sometimes, priding themselves, all of them, willy-nilly, upon their greater native and acquired distinction, all thinking themselves finer and better and higher than his wife, whom nevertheless they did not wish to wound. . . . He saw this last even in his mother, in the boys, in Adeletje and in Gerdy—though Gerdy never succeeded—and he really preferred the undisguised aversion of little Klaasje, who clearly showed that she could not bear Mathilde. . . .
And he now saw that, in marrying this woman, who was not quite of their class, he had wanted to display pride in particular against the arbitrariness of those whom he called his people—his parents, his family—he had wanted to show that there was no longer any distinction of class, especially no distinction in those minor shades of class. If they were going to think about distinctions, she had the distinction of health . . . while his own people were all sick, in body and soul, not, it might be, suffering severely, but all affected or tainted with those "nerves" of their time. . . . Perhaps his pride had just contained a desire to place his wife, Mathilde, before them as an example:
