He felt a sudden hatred for Nettie, and for this silence of hers that prejudiced one’s affections and one’s principles. She tried—he could feel it; it was to salve her own pride—to make him consider himself fettered, diminished, a shore from which the wave of life receded. And what had she achieved, after all, that she should question the purpose of his existence? He didn’t know much about her life these past few years—which alone showed there couldn’t be much to learn. A brief, impossible marriage, a lot of trips, and some flighty jobs. What did she have to show for all this time—without children, no longer young, sitting there preoccupied with a stain on her dress? She couldn’t suggest that he was to blame for the turn her life had taken—she wasn’t all that unjust. She had suffered at the time, no doubt, but it was so long ago. They couldn’t begin now to accuse or vindicate one another. That was why it was much better not to open the subject at all, actually. He glanced severely at her, restraining her recriminations. But she had lost her mocking, judicial air. She was still looking down, though less attentively. Her hands were folded over her knee.

Well, she was beautiful; he would have noticed it even if it had never been pointed out to him.… All at once he wanted to say “I have often thought of you” (for it was true, he realized now; he thought of her every day). Abruptly, he looked away. At the foot of the hill, May had stopped playing with the children and was sitting on a rock. It is my own decision, he reminded himself, that Nettie isn’t mine, that I haven’t seen her in all these years. And the knowledge, though not completely gratifying, gave him a sense of integrity and self-denial, so that when he looked at her again it was without desire, and he told himself, I have grown.