Nesbit Thorne, unfortunately, was none of these things, and so his married life had come to grief.  The first few months were smoothed and gilded by his passionate enjoyment of her mere physical perfection, his pleasure in the admiration she excited, and in the envy of other men.  Life’s river glided smoothly, gayly in the sunshine; then ugly snags began to appear, and reefs, fretting the surface of the water, and hinting of sterner difficulties below; then a long stretch of tossing, troubled water, growing more and more turbulent as it proceeded, boiling and bubbling into angry whirlpools and sullen eddies.  The boat of married happiness was hard among the breakers, tossed from side to side, the sport of every wind of passion; contesting hands were on the tiller ropes.  The craft yawed and jerked in its course, a spectacle for men to weep over, and devils to rejoice in; ran aground on quicksands, tore and tangled its cordage, rent the planking, and at the end of a cruise of as many months as it should have lasted years, it lay a hopeless wreck on the grim bar of separation.

The affair was managed gracefully, and with due deference to the amenities.  There was gossip, of course—­there always is gossip—­and public opinion was many sided.  Rumors circled around which played the whole gamut from infidelity to bankruptcy; these lived their brief span, and then gave place to other rumors, equally unfounded, and therefore equally enjoyable.  The only fact authenticated, was the fact of separation, and the most lasting conclusion arrived at in regard to the matter was that it had been managed very gracefully.

The divorce which seemed the natural outcome of this state of affairs, and to which every one looked, as a matter of course, was delayed in this instance.  People wondered a little, and then remembered that the Thornes were a Roman Catholic family, and concluded that the young man had religious scruples.  With Mrs. Thorne the matter was plain enough; she had no reason, as yet, sufficiently strong to make her desire absolute release, and far greater command over Thorne’s income by retaining her position as his wife.

When his domestic affairs had reached a crisis, Thorne had quietly disappeared for a year, during which time people only knew that he was enjoying his recovered freedom in distant and little frequented places.  There were rumors of him in Tartary, on the Niger, in Siberia.  At the expiration of the year he returned to New York, and resumed his old place in society as though nothing untoward had occurred.  He lived at his club, and no man or woman ever saw him set foot within the precincts of his own house.  Occasionally he was seen to stop the nurse in the park, and caress and speak to his little son.  His life was that of a single man.  In the society they both frequented, he often encountered his wife, and always behaved to her with scrupulous politeness, even with marked courtesy.  If he ever missed his home, or experienced regret for his matrimonial failure, he kept the feeling hidden, and presented to the world an unmoved front.