Dorothea waited a little; she had discerned a faint pleasure stealing over Rosamond’s face. But there was no answer, and she went on, with a gathering tremor, “Marriage is so unlike everything else. There is something even awful in the nearness it brings. Even if we loved someone else better than⁠—than those we were married to, it would be no use”⁠—poor Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety, could only seize her language brokenly⁠—“I mean, marriage drinks up all our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort of love. I know it may be very dear⁠—but it murders our marriage⁠—and then the marriage stays with us like a murder⁠—and everything else is gone. And then our husband⁠—if he loved and trusted us, and we have not helped him, but made a curse in his life⁠—”