His feeling with regard to Fanny was confined to curiosity, but
mainly his thoughts, his illimitable disgust, were directed at himself.
His anger, returning like the night wind from a different direction,
cut at himself, at the collapse of his integrity. He was, in reality,
frightened at what had been no better than a relapse into a state of
mania; he was shocked at the presence, however temporary, of a frenzy
of madness.
Nothing had altered his attitude toward the woman who was his wife; all
his active emotions for her had gone. Then his attention was drawn from
his personality to his life, his surroundings; they were suffocating.
Not to be borne! Nowhere could he discover a detail, an episode, that
had the importance of reality. He had a sensation of being wrapped in a
feather bed, the need to make a violent gesture--sending the white
fluff whirling through space--and so be free to breathe. This house,
the symmetrical copied walls, the harmonious rugs, symbols of public
success and good opinion, the standard of a public approbation,
exasperated him beyond endurance. He wanted to push the walls out, tear
the rugs into rags, and scatter them contemptuously before the
scandalized inertness of Eastlake. Lee had what was regarded as an
admirable existence, an admirable family--the world imposed this
judgment on him; and the desire, the determination, swept over him to
smash to irremediable atoms what was so well applauded.
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