She was only conscious of an intense longing for the end of things, and darkness and quiet.
When it was all over and her husband was compelled to recognize that it had been a failure, his mental attitude is thus expressed: He had determined to preserve at all costs the appearance of the indulgent, non-critical, over-patient husband that he intensely felt himself to be.

No force, he thought grimly, shutting his jaws hard, should drag from him a word of his real sentiments.

Fanned by the wind of this virtuous resolution, his sentiments grew hotter and hotter as he walked about, locking doors and windows, and reviewing bitterly the events of the evening.

If he was to restrain himself from saying, he would at least allow himself the privilege of feeling all that was possible to a man deeply injured.
And that night Lydia felt for the "first time the quickening to life of her child.

And during all that day, until then, she had forgotten that she was to know motherhood." Can words more forcefully depict the _worry of the squirrel-cage_ than this--that an unnecessary dinner, given in unnecessary style, at unnecessary expense, to visitors to whom it was unnecessary should have driven from her thought, and doubtless seriously injured, the new life that she was so soon to give to the world?
Oh, men and women of divine descent and divine heritage, quit your squirrel-cage stage of existence.