He found it useless to try and give her superficial explanations, which were generally inconsistent. She was so completely unprejudiced, and her real interest lay so completely outside those things, that her critical faculty was utterly impaired, and she demonstrated his fallacies with a quickness which amazed him. She had all the acuteness he was wanting in, and he was forced to confess to himself that had it not been too late, she might have given him valuable help.
But he did not understand her, and he mistrusted her; consequently he gave her no real confidence, and indeed upon more than one occasion he tried to mislead her.
From that moment she never asked him another question. She had done what she conceived to be her duty, and the result was to lower him for ever in her eyes. She was indeed a severe young judge, as many of her discoveries were "in the way of business," and might have been made to bear an elastic interpretation; but she was conscious that this outcome of her sense of duty was destroying every chance of forbearing with her husband's peculiarities, and, if so, she must resign herself to not understanding; she gave him no more trouble, and he was equally incapable of comprehending the withdrawal of her interest as he was of its origin.
Without a soul to speak to, without any real interest in her life, Margaret did what many a woman before her has done, where there has existed an unusually active brain and no outlet for thought in any other direction. She began to write, and her sense of harmony, and the fervid and poetical temperament she possessed, drove her to writing in metre.
Not always. She sometimes wrote down her impressions of character, of scenes--she put down those rapid and subtle changes of feeling about things animate and inanimate that received life and colour from the mood of the moment. She found so great a relief from this occupation that it gradually absorbed her. It was like pouring out her very soul to a friend, who could never wound her or disappoint her.
But she never conceived that there was any danger in it. All was carefully destroyed or locked away. She had many lonely hours and a constant struggle with herself. But for this occupation she would have suffered more. The moment a passionate grief or sorrow can find expression it obtains relief, it is the being pent up and choked back that gives intensity.