It was this vacancy
that specially disturbed him: it had an appearance, new to all his
processes, of permanence.
Outside his will the fact was pronounced for him that--for a long or
short period--he had ceased to love his wife. There was something so
intimately and conventionally discourteous in his realization that he
avoided it even in his thoughts. But it would not be ignored; it was
too robust a truth to be suppressed by weakened instincts. He didn't
love Fanny and Fanny did love him ... a condition, he felt indignantly,
which should be automatically provided against; none of the ethics of
decency or conduct provided for that. It wasn't for a second, without
the single, the familiar and ancient, cause, allowed. Fanny, least of
any imaginable woman, had given him a pretext for complaint. Yet, with
everyone acknowledging her to be the perfect wife, and he at the fore
of such praise, he had incontestably stopped caring for her. It was a
detestable situation.
In the whole body of preconceived thought and action there wasn't a
word, a possible movement, left for him. He was, simply, a hyena; that
description, not innocent of humor, was still strikingly close to what
he would generally hear if the state of his mind were known. It was
paralyzing, but absolutely no provision had been made for men, decent
enough, who had stopped loving decent wives.
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