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“Never, you darling! I could carry you to the end of the earth, and I shall carry you, all of you, no matter how many you are now, or how many you may yet become.”

And they returned home, arm in arm, their hearts singing with gladness.

“If the worst comes to the worst, sweet love, one must admit that it is very easy to jump that abyss which separates body and soul!”

“What a thing to say!”

“If I had only realised it before, I should have been less unhappy. Oh! those idealists!”

And they entered their cottage.

The good old times had returned and had, apparently, come to stay. The husband went to work to his office as before. They lived again through love’s spring time. No doctor was required and the high spirits never flagged.

After the third christening, however, he came to the conclusion that matters were serious and started playing his old game with the inevitable results: doctor, sick-leave, riding-exercise, port! But there must be an end of it, at all costs. Every time the balance-sheet showed a deficit.

But when, finally, his whole nervous system went out of joint, he let nature have her own way. Immediately expenses went up and he was beset with difficulties.

He was not a poor man, it is true, but on the other hand he was not blest with too many of this world’s riches.

“To tell you the truth, old girl,” he said to his wife, “it will be the same old story over again.”

“I am afraid it will, my dear,” replied the poor woman, who, in addition to her duties as a mother, had to do the whole work of the house now.

After the birth of her fourth child, the work grew too hard for her and a nursemaid had to be engaged.

“Now it must stop,” avowed the disconsolate husband. “This must be the last.”

Poverty looked in at the door. The foundations on which the house was built were tottering.

And thus, at the age of thirty, in the very prime of their life, the young husband and wife found themselves condemned to celibacy. He grew moody, his complexion became grey and his eyes lost their lustre. Her rich beauty faded, her fine figure wasted away, and she suffered all the sorrows of a mother who sees her children growing up in poverty and rags.

One day, as she was standing in the kitchen, frying herrings, a neighbour called in for a friendly chat.

“How are you?” she began.

“Thank you, I’m not up to very much. How are you?”

“Oh! I’m not at all well. Married life is a misery if one has to be constantly on one’s guard.”

“Do you think you are the only one?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know what my husband said to me the other day? One ought to spare the draught cattle! And I suffer under it all, I can tell you. No, there’s no happiness in marriage. Either husband or wife is bound to suffer. It’s one or the other!”

“Or both!”

“But what about the men of science who grow fat at the expense of the Government?”

“They have to think of so many things, and moreover, it is improper to write about such problems; they must not be discussed openly.”

“But that would be the first necessity!” And the two women fell to discussing their bitter experiences.

In the following summer they were compelled to remain in town; they were living in a basement with a view of the gutter, the smell of which was so objectionable that it was impossible to keep the windows open.

The wife did needlework in the same room in which the children were playing; the husband, who had lost his appointment on account of his extreme shabbiness, was copying a manuscript in the adjoining room, and grumbling at the children’s noise. Hard words were bandied through the open door.

It was Whitsuntide. In the afternoon the husband was lying on the ragged leather sofa, gazing at a window on the other side of the street. He was watching a woman of evil reputation who was dressing for her evening stroll. A spray of lilac and two oranges were lying by the side of her looking-glass.