I was about to decompose nitrogen.

Go back to your own affairs." Balthazar re-entered the laboratory and closed the door.
"Decompose nitrogen!" said the poor woman as she re-entered her chamber, and burst into tears.
The phrase was unintelligible to her.

Men, trained by education to have a general conception of everything, have no idea how distressing it is for a woman to be unable to comprehend the thought of the man she loves.
More forbearing than we, these divine creatures do not let us know when the language of their souls is not understood by us; they shrink from letting us feel the superiority of their feelings, and hide their pain as gladly as they silence their wishes: but, having higher ambitions in love than men, they desire to wed not only the heart of a husband, but his mind.
To Madame Claes the sense of knowing nothing of a science which absorbed her husband filled her with a vexation as keen as the beauty of a rival might have caused.

The struggle of woman against woman gives to her who loves the most the advantage of loving best; but a mortification like this only proved Madame Claes's powerlessness and humiliated the feelings by which she lived.

She was ignorant; and she had reached a point where her ignorance parted her from her husband.