For one thing, she was bitterly resentful. It was useless to disguise that he was not merely indifferent to her physical charms, he positively disliked and even dreaded that aspect of their life together. Within a very short time after their marriage, he made the discovery that she drank.
Even before that knowledge came he had discerned something unwholesome about her. The blackened eyebrows, the rouged cheeks, the dyed hair, the overfine presence, the stealthy, cloying color of scent she exuded, the coarse mouth, the apathetic eyes, had always been things that he dared not let his mind rest upon in detail even before he had taken them unto himself. And now that he had done so at the call of duty, and with even that to sustain him, he foresaw that he must come to dislike them more and more. It hardly needed a pervading reek of brandy in her bedroom to read the future.
Unluckily for Cora, the monotony of a "straight" life with such a humdrum young man was more than she could stand for any length of time. The old fatal habit was soon upon her again. Years of yielding had weakened her will; and now she was beginning to grow contemptuous of her husband--perhaps as a requital of his apathy towards her--she began to assume a defiant carelessness, first of manner and then of conduct.
Disaster was foreshadowed by several quarrels. None of these were serious, but they showed the inevitable end towards which matters had begun to drift. Henry Harper was not the sort of man with whom it was easy to quarrel; he had no aptitude for a form of reflex action quite alien to his nature. All the same, there were times when he was almost tempted to defend himself from Cora's perpetual sneers at his dullness, not only in her company, which was bad enough, but in that of her friends, which was worse.
Her chief complaint was his bearing in restaurants and public places. He had not a word to say for himself; he let "the girls" and "the boys"--Cora included her whole exceedingly numerous acquaintance in these terms--"come it over him"; he took everything lying down; and she couldn't understand why a man who was as clever as he was supposed to be "didn't let himself out a bit now and again."
Harry's social maladroitness became a very sore subject. It annoyed Cora intensely that the boys and the girls should so consistently "make a mark of him." His inability to hit back seemed to be a grave reflection upon her judgment and good taste in marrying him. The time soon came when she told him that if he couldn't show himself a little brighter in company, he could either stay at home of an evening or go his way, and she would go hers.