One thing was clear, that by marrying George
she gained great freedom. If she had married anybody closer to her,
she might have jarred with him; there might have been collision and
wreck as complete as if they had been entirely opposed; for she was
not the kind of person to accommodate herself to others even in the
matter of small differences. But George's road through space lay
entirely apart from hers, and there was not the slightest chance of
interference. She was under the protection of a husband; she could
do things that, as an unmarried woman, especially in a foreign land,
she could not do, and the compensatory sacrifice to her was small.
This is really the only attempt at elucidation I can give. She went
regularly all her life to chapel with George, but even when he became
deacon, and "supplied" the villages round, she never would join the
church as a member. She never agreed with the minister, and he never
could make anything out of her. They did not quarrel, but she
thought nothing of his sermons, and he was perplexed and
uncomfortable in the presence of a nondescript who did not respond to
any dogmatic statement of the articles of religion, and who yet could
not be put aside as "one of those in the gallery"--that is to say, as
one of the ordinary unconverted, for she used to quote hymns with
amazing fervour, and she quoted them to him with a freedom and a
certain superiority which he might have expected from an aged brother
minister, but certainly not from one of his own congregation.
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