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The wedding took place. The world had received a hint that they would live together like brother and sister, and the world awaited with a malicious grin the result of the great reform which should put matrimony on another basis altogether.

The newly married couple went abroad.

When they returned, the young wife was pale and ill-tempered. She began at once to take riding-lessons. The world scented mischief and waited. The man looked as if he were guilty of a base act and was ashamed of himself. It all came out at last.

“They have not been living like brother and sister,” said the world.

“What? Without loving one another? But that is–well, what is it?”

“A forbidden relationship!” said the materialists.

“It is a spiritual marriage!”

“Or incest,” suggested an anarchist.

Facts remained facts, but the sympathy was on the wane. Real life, stripped of All make-believe, confronted them and began to take revenge.

The lawyer practised his profession, but the wife’s profession was practised by a maid and a nurse. Therefore she had no occupation. The want of occupation encouraged brooding, and she brooded a great deal over her position. She found it unsatisfactory. Was it right that an intellectual woman like her should spend her days in idleness? Once her husband had ventured to remark that no one compelled her to live in idleness. He never did it again.

“She had no profession.”

“True; to be idle was no profession. Why didn’t she nurse the baby?”

“Nurse the baby? She wanted a profession which brought in money.”

“Was she such a miser, then? She had already more than she knew how to spend; why should she want to earn money?”

“To be on an equal footing with him.”

“That could never be, for she would always be in a position to which he could never hope to attain. It was nature’s will that the woman was to be the mother, not the man.”

“A very stupid arrangement!”

“Very likely! The opposite might have been the case, but that would have been equally stupid.”

“Yes; but her life was unbearable. It didn’t satisfy her to live for the family only, she wanted to live for others as well.”

“Hadn’t she better begin with the family? There was plenty of time to think of the others.”

The conversation might have continued through all eternity; as it was it only lasted an hour.

The lawyer was, of course, away almost all day long, and even when he was at home he had his consulting hours. It drove Adeline nearly mad. He was always locked in his consulting-room with other women who confided information to him which he was bound to keep secret. These secrets formed a barrier between them, and made her feel that he was more than a match for her.

It roused a sullen hatred in her heart; she resented the injustice of their mutual relationship; she sought for a means to drag him down. Come down he must, so that they should be on the same level.

One day she proposed the foundation of a sanatorium. He said all he could against it, for he was very busy with his practice. But on further consideration he thought that occupation of some sort might be the saving of her; perhaps it would help her to settle down.

The sanatorium was founded; he was one of the directors.

She was on the Committee and ruled. When she had ruled for six months, she imagined herself so well up in the art of healing that she interviewed patients and gave them advice.

“It’s easy enough,” she said.

Then it happened that the house-surgeon made a mistake, and she straightway lost all confidence in him. It further happened that one day, in the full consciousness of her superior wisdom, she prescribed for a patient herself, in the doctor’s absence. The patient had the prescription made up, took it and died.

This necessitated a removal to another centre of activity. But it disturbed the equilibrium. A second child, which was born about the same time, disturbed it still more and, to make matters worse, a rumour of the fatal accident was spreading through the town.