The Bond of Marriage  by Henry James

Between those four walls she had lived ever since; they were to surround her for the rest of her life. It was the house of darkness,the house of dumbness,the house of suffocation.Osmond’s beautiful mind gave it neither light nor air ;Osmond’s beautiful mind indeed seemed to peep down from a small high window and mock at her. Of course it had not been physical suffering; for physical suffering there might have been a remedy. She could come and go;she had her liberty;her husband was perfectly polite. He took himself so seriously ;it was something appalling. Under all his culture,his cleverness,his amenity,under his good-nature,his facility,his knowledge of life,his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in a bank of flowers.she had taken him seriously,but she had not taken him so seriously as that. How could she ---especially when she had known him better? She was to think of him as he thought of himself---as the first gentleman in Europe. So it was that she had thought of him first,and that indeed was the reason she had married him. But when she began to see what it implied she drew back; there was more in the bond than she had meant to put her name to. It implied a sovereign contempt for every one but some three or four very exalted people whom he envied ,and for everything in the world but half a dozen ideas of his own.