Book 2 Chapter 23 The Public Prosecutor

Something of the same kind happened when he married. A very
brilliant match, from a worldly point of view, was arranged for
him, and he married chiefly because by refusing he would have had
to hurt the young lady who wished to be married to him, and those
who arranged the marriage, and also because a marriage with a
nice young girl of noble birth flattered his vanity and gave him
pleasure. But this marriage very soon proved to be even less "the
right thing" than the Government service and his position at
Court.

After the birth of her first child the wife decided to have no
more, and began leading that luxurious worldly life in which he
now had to participate whether he liked or not.

She was not particularly handsome, and was faithful to him, and
she seemed, in spite of all the efforts it cost her, to derive
nothing but weariness from the life she led, yet she
perseveringly continued to live it, though it was poisoning her
husband's life. And all his efforts to alter this life was
shattered, as against a stone wall, by her conviction, which all
her friends and relatives supported, that all was as it should
be.

The child, a little girl with bare legs and long golden curls,
was a being perfectly foreign to him, chiefly because she was
trained quite otherwise than he wished her to be. There sprung up
between the husband and wife the usual misunderstanding, without
even the wish to understand each other, and then a silent
warfare, hidden from outsiders and tempered by decorum. All this
made his life at home a burden, and became even less "the right
thing" than his service and his post.