The Helpmate by May Sinclair — Read

Up to that moment when he had looked across the dinner table at Anne, Majendie had felt secure in the bonds of his marriage. Anne's repugnance had broken the natural tie; but up to that moment he had never doubted that the immaterial link still held. If at times her presence was a bodily torment, at other times he felt it as a spiritual protection. His immense charity made allowance for all the extraordinary attitudes of Anne. In his imagination they reduced themselves to one, the attitude of inscrutable physical repugnance. He had accepted (as he had told himself so often) the situation she had created. It appeared to him, of all situations, the crudest and most simple. It had its merciful limits. The discomfort of it, once vague, had grown, to his thwarted senses, almost brutally defined. He could at least say, "It was here the trouble began, and here, therefore, it shall end."

He thought he had sounded the depths of her repugnance, and could measure by it his own misery. He said, "At any rate I know where I am"; and he believed that if he stayed where he was, if he respected his wife's prejudices, her prejudices would be bound to respect him. He could not make her love him, but at least he considered that he had justified his claim to her respect.