Widdowson knew that Monica was going to the Academy.  He allowed her to set forth alone, and even tried to persuade himself that he was indifferent as to the hour of her return; but she had not long been gone before he followed.  Insufferable misery possessed him.  His married life threatened to terminate in utter wreck, and he had the anguish of recognizing that to a great extent this catastrophe would be his own fault.  Resolve as he might, he found it impossible to repress the impulses of jealousy which, as soon as peace had been declared between them, brought about a new misunderstanding.  Terrible thoughts smouldered in his mind; he felt himself to be one of those men who are driven by passion into crime.  Deliberately he had brooded over a tragic close to the wretchedness of his existence; he would kill himself, and Monica should perish with him.  But an hour of contentment sufficed to banish such visions as sheer frenzy.  He saw once more how harmless, how natural, were Monica’s demands, and how peacefully he might live with her but for the curse of suspicion from which he could not free himself.  Any other man would deem her a model wifely virtue.  Her care of the house was all that reason could desire.  In her behaviour he had never detected the slightest impropriety.  He believed her chaste as any woman living She asked only to be trusted, and that, in spite of all, was beyond his power.

In no woman on earth could he have put perfect confidence.  He regarded them as born to perpetual pupilage.  Not that their inclinations were necessarily wanton; they were simply incapable of attaining maturity, remained throughout their life imperfect beings, at the mercy of craft, ever liable to be misled by childish misconceptions.  Of course he was right; he himself represented the guardian male, the wife-proprietor, who from the dawn of civilization has taken abundant care that woman shall not outgrow her nonage.  The bitterness of his situation lay in the fact that he had wedded a woman who irresistibly proved to him her claims as a human being.  Reason and tradition contended in him, to his ceaseless torment.

And again, he feared that Monica did not love him.  Had she ever loved him?  There was too much ground for suspecting that she had only yielded to the persistence of his entreaties, with just liking enough to permit a semblance of tenderness, and glad to exchange her prospect of distasteful work for a comfortable married life.  Her liking he might have fostered; during those first happy weeks, assuredly he had done so, for no woman could be insensible to the passionate worship manifest in his every look, his every word.  Later, he took the wrong path, seeking to oppose her instincts, to reform her mind, eventually to become her lord and master.  Could he not even now retrace his steps?  Supposing her incapable of bowing before him, of kissing his feet, could he not be content to make of her a loyal friend, a delightful companion?