in questions of 'matrimonial divergence.' He
recognizes that most obvious of all obvious truths, that marriage is
not always a success; nay, more than this, that it is often a
makeshift, an apology, a pretense. But he professes to undertake
nothing beyond a statement of the facts. It rests with the public to
lay his statement beside their experience and observation, and thus
take measure of the fidelity of his art.

He notes the variety of motives by which people are actuated in the
choice of husbands and wives. In the novel called _The Woodlanders_,
Grace Melbury, the daughter of a rich though humbly-born yeoman, has
unusual opportunities for a girl of her class, and is educated to a
point of physical and intellectual daintiness which make her seem
superior to her home environment. Her father has hoped that she will
marry her rustic lover, Giles Winterbourne, who, by the way, is a man
in every fibre of his being. Grace is quite unspoiled by her life at a
fashionable boarding school, but after her return her father feels
(and Hardy makes the reader feel) that in marrying Giles she will
sacrifice herself. She marries Dr. Fitzspiers, a brilliant young
physician, recently come into the neighborhood, and in so doing she
chooses for the worse. The character of Dr. Fitzspiers is summarized
in a statement he once made (presumably to a male friend) that 'on one
occasion he had noticed himself to be possessed by five distinct
infatuations at the same time.'

His flagrant infidelities bring about a temporary separation; Grace is
not able to comprehend 'such double and treble-barreled hearts.' When
finally they are reunited the life-problem of each still awaits an
adequate solution. For the motive which brings the girl back to her
husband is only a more complex phase of the same motive which chiefly
prompted her to marry him. Hardy says that Fitzspiers as a lover acted
upon Grace 'like a dram.' His presence 'threw her into an atmosphere
which biased her doings until the influence was over.' Afterward she
felt 'something of the nature of regret for the mood she had
experienced.'

But this same story contains two other characters who are unmatched in
fiction as the incarnation of pure love and self-forgetfulness. Giles
Winterbourne, whose devotion to Grace is without wish for happiness
which shall not imply a greater happiness for her, dies that no breath
of suspicion may fall upon her. He in turn is loved by Marty South
with a