In April he was obliged to admit to himself that he knew no more of Honora's attitude toward him than on the day of their wedding. He recognized that she made no show of emotion; it was an essential part of her to seem at all times unmoved. That was well enough for the face she turned toward the world; but directed at him, her husband, its enigmatic quality began to obsess his mind. What Honora thought of him, why she had married him, became an almost continuous question.
It bred an increasing sense of instability that became loud, defiant. More than once he was at the point of self-betrayal: query, demand, objection, would rise on a temporary angry flood to his lips. But, struggling, behind a face as unmoved as Honora's own, he would suppress his resentment, the sense of injury, and smoke with the appearance of the greatest placidity.
His regard for his wife placed an extraordinary check on his impulses and utterance. He deliberated carefully over his speech, watched her with an attention not far from a concealed anxiety, and was quick to absorb any small conventions unconsciously indicated by her remarks. She never instructed or held anything over him; he would have been acutely sensitive to any air of superiority, and immediately antagonized. But Honora was entirely free from pretensions of that variety; she was as clear and honest as a goblet of water.
Jason's regard for her grew pace by pace with the feeling of baffling doubt. He was passing through the public square, and his thoughts were interrupted by a faint drifting sweetness. "I believe the lilacs are out," he said unconsciously aloud and stopping. His surrounding was remarkably serene, withdrawn--the courthouse, a small block of brick with white corniced windows, flat Ionic portico, and slatted wood lantern with a bell, stood in the middle of the grassy common shut in by an irregular rectangle of dwellings with low eaves and gardens. The sun shone with a beginning warmth in a vague sky that intensified the early green. It seemed that he could see, against a house, the lavender blur of the lilac blossoms.
Then his attention was attracted by the figure of a man, at once strange and familiar, coming toward him with a dragging gait. Jason studied the other until a sudden recognition clouded his countenance, filled him with a swift, unpleasant surprise.