The Weight of Unspoken Promises — Middlemarch

After church, Dorothea sees that Casaubon will not speak to Will and that Will's presence has only deepened the alienation she had hoped might heal. Casaubon was unwell that morning and nearly silent at luncheon. The Sunday afternoon is desolate: Herodotus, Pascal, and Keble's Christian Year all read as flat as tunes beaten on wood, while she hungers for a fuller companionship her marriage cannot give and watches Will recede into the warm world of activity, turning his face toward her as he goes.

After dinner Casaubon takes her to the library, arranges his notebooks, and puts into her hand the table of contents to all of them. He asks her to read aloud and mark at each point he says mark, the first step in a sifting process he has long had in view. Since Lydgate's diagnosis his reluctance to let her work with him has turned into demand: he wants to engross her integrity and devotion. At midnight she wakes to find him wakeful, his mind remarkably lucid, directing her with bird-like speed through material he had been creeping over for years. In darkness by the dying fire he asks whether, in case of his death, she will carry out his wishes, avoid what he would deprecate, and apply herself to what he should desire.

Dorothea will not pledge blindly: whatever affection prompted she would do without promising, but she asks till tomorrow. He sleeps; she lies four hours in conflict, picturing years spent sorting shattered mummies for a theory withered at birth, yet unable to refuse a stricken soul. In the morning, too weak to wound him, she goes to say yes to her own doom. In the Yew-tree Walk she finds him in the summer-house, brow bowed on his arms. She says she is ready; he does not move. She takes off his velvet cap and cries, Wake, dear, wake. But Dorothea never gave her answer. Later, delirious, she tells Lydgate to tell her husband she is ready to promise; the silence in her husband's ear was never more to be broken.