Legge's translation gives the third line as the third nine, undivided, suggesting the idea of a carriage from which the strap beneath has been removed, or of a husband and wife looking upon each other with averted eyes. The accompanying commentary reads that husband and wife look upon each other with averted eyes because the subject of this line cannot rightly govern his household.
Nine in the third place sits at the top of Qian, the lower trigram, directly beneath the fourth line, the single yielding line whose restraint gives Small Taming its name. Where the first two lines returned to their own course with no resistance felt at all, here the pressure of that restraint is finally close enough to cause visible strain. The image of a carriage stripped of the strap that should bind its wheel to its axle, or of a married couple no longer able to face each other directly, describes something that still functions but only under evident tension, a caution rather than an outright disaster.
This is the point in the hexagram where the small, gentle force above first makes its presence felt in the lower trigram, and Legge's commentary frames the trouble as domestic and relational rather than catastrophic. The line still belongs to the correct, strong trigram of Heaven, but it is the line closest to the check, and the strain it shows is the price of that proximity.