I did not at all object to going down to the country with him on his business trips; but he always goes alone now; and he never mentions his work to me.  And he is too careful as to what he says to me.  Of course, I know that he is right not to speak ill of anybody; but still a man need not be so particular before his wife as before strangers.  He has given up talking to me altogether:  that is the plain truth, whatever he may pretend.  When we do converse, his manner is something like what it was in the laboratory at the Towers.  Of course, he sometimes becomes more familiar; only then he never seems in earnest, but makes love to me in a bantering, half playful, half sarcastic way.”

“You are rather hard to please, perhaps.  I remember you used to say that a husband should be just as tender and respectful after marriage as before it.  You seem to have broken poor Ned into this; and now you are not satisfied.”

“Nelly, if there is one subject on which girls are more idiotically ignorant than on any other, it is happiness in marriage.  A courtier, a lover, a man who will not let the winds of heaven visit your face too harshly, is very nice, no doubt; but he is not a husband.  I want to be a wife and not a fragile ornament kept in a glass case.  He would as soon think of submitting any project of his to the judgment of a doll as to mine.  If he has to explain or discuss any serious matter of business with me, he does so apologetically, as if he were treating me roughly.”

“Well, my dear, you see, when he tried the other plan, you did not like that either.  What is the unfortunate man to do?”

“I dont know.  I suppose I was wrong in shrinking from his confidence.  I am always wrong.  It seems to me that the more I try to do right, the more mischief I contrive to make.”

“This is all pretty dismal, Marian.  What sort of conduct on his part would make you happy?”

“Oh, there are so many little things.  He makes me jealous of everything and everybody.  I am jealous of the men in the city—­I was jealous of the sanitary inspector the other day—­because he talks with interest to them.  I know he stays in the city later than he need.  It is a relief to me to go out in the evening, or to have a few people here once or twice a week; but I am angry because I know it is a relief to him too.  I am jealous even of that organ.  How I hale those Bach fugues!  Listen to the maddening thing twisting and rolling and racing and then mixing itself up into one great boom.  He can get on with Bach:  he can’t get on with me.  I have even condescended to be jealous of other women—­of such women as Mrs. Saunders.  He despises her:  he plays with her as dexterously as she thinks she plays with him; but he likes to chat with her; and they rattle away for a whole evening without the least constraint.  She has no conscience:  she talks absolute nonsense about art and literature:  she flirts even more disgustingly than she used to when she was Belle Woodward;