How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
[…] he understood that, by means as yet unknown to him, the separation between himself and the partner of his guilt had been achieved, and that now the whole tribe had rallied about his wife on the tacit assumption that nobody knew anything […] (33. 41)
The family—or "tribe"—acts as a unit in order to protect itself, here against the dangerous possibility of Newland's divorce from May.
Quote #8
"[…] She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would be, because once, when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you most wanted."
Archer received this strange communication in silence. His eyes remained unseeingly fixed on the thronged sunlit square below the window. At length he said in a low voice: "She never asked me." (34.54-5)
The family's power is so dominant that Archer found himself compelled to do something he didn't want to do—staying with May in order to preserve the family.
Quote #9
He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a perfectly charming girl […] and she had represented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of an unescapable duty. (21.10)
There's nothing romantic about Archer's feelings for May, unless a "steadying sense of an unescapable duty" is your cup of tea. May makes a good wife, not a lover.