Whether it was from a colossal conceit or from a meanness of vision, he seemed actually not to believe in her love--or, if this was a mad world, he seemed to want more! And he disbelieved not humbly, but with that sharpened scepticism which leaves so lasting a stain--and if he wanted more, he wanted silently, else maybe he had incited her to the bitterest rebellion of all: of telling him that she could love him no more than she already did, were she Psyche and he Cupid in Apuleius's book. He was that difficult kind of man (difficult, anyway, in a woman's first adventure) who never says "I love you," will rather say anything else than that; seeming, perversely, always to be waiting for something else, some further revelation. He was like a wall jagged here and there with sharp flints, against which Iris, in those first months, had hopefully then blindly thrown herself and her love, only to be hurt. He hurt her always, and inexplicably.... Indeed there's no pride in any love worthy of the name. Pride is just an imp, the very last of last resources, to be only used when all those gentler attributes of love have failed--for if love is humbled too far, then pride must become a part of it. She had felt, even before her marriage, that there were queer depths in Roger which might sometimes make him a little ... unexpected. And, of course, difficult. She might, with this man, have to waive the slight advantage a woman has in loving a gentleman rather than, say, a Dago, which is that a gentleman more or less does what is expected of him, a dull advantage, which Iris's thoughts very easily waived aside, for she was quick to allow as wide a licence for other people's improbabilities as she expected them to allow her. But she hadn't dreamt that the queerest of these, in him, could take so grotesque a shape as cruelty! For, however refined as an art cruelty may become, there is something vulgar and stupid in it as a trait, it must always be the very opposite of the immaculate--and that, as a man and as a lover, Roger had seemed to be. That idea of him, as essentially immaculate, had helped to compel her to him. And so now, hurt her as his cruelty did, it jarred and shocked her even more--that an illusion should have gone so distastefully awry!