Mrs. Brandon hated her husband. No one in Polchester had the slightest suspicion of this; certainly her husband least of all. She herself had been first aware of it one summer afternoon some five or six years ago when, very pleasantly and in the kindest way, he had told her that she knew nothing about primroses. They had been having tea at the Dean's, and, as was often the case then, the conversation had concerned itself with flowers and ferns. Mrs. Brandon was quite ready to admit that she knew nothing about primroses--there were for her yellow ones and other ones, and that was all. The Archdeacon had often before told her that she was ignorant, and she had acquiesced without a murmur. Upon this afternoon, just as Mrs. Sampson was asking her whether she liked sugar, revelation came to her. That little scene was often afterwards vividly in front of her--the Archdeacon, with his magnificent legs spread apart in front of the fireplace; Miss Dobell trying to look with wisdom upon a little bundle of primulas that the Dean was showing to her; the sunlight upon the lawn beyond the window; the rooks in the high elms busy with their nests; the May warmth striking through the misty air--all was painted for ever afterwards upon her mind. "My dear, you may as well admit at once that you know nothing whatever about primroses." "No, I'm afraid I don't--thank you, Mrs. Sampson. One lump, please." She had been coming to it. Of course, a very long time before this--very, very far away, now an incredible memory, seemed the days when she had loved him so passionately that she almost died with anxiety if he left her for a single night. Almost too passionate it had been, perhaps. He himself was not capable of passionate love, or, at any rate, had been quite satisfied to be _not_ passionately in love with _her_. He pursued other things--his career, his religion, his simple beneficence, his health, his vigour. His love for his son was the most passionately personal thing in him, and over that they might have met had he been able to conceive her as a passionate being. Her ignorance of life--almost complete when he had met her--had been but little diminished by her time with him. She knew now, after all those years, little more of the world and its terrors and blessings than she had known then. But she did know that nothing in her had been satisfied. She knew now of what she was capable, and it was perhaps the thought that he had, by taking her, prevented her fulfilment and complete experience that caused her, more than anything else, to hate him.