so, you are mistaken. Up to six months before this story opens our
married life had been ideal--for which reason I didn't open the story
earlier. Ideal marriages (to any one except the contracting parties)
are uninteresting affairs. It is such a pity that the good, the
laudable, things in life generally are.

One of the reasons why our union was ideal (up to six months before
this story opens) was that we shared identical tastes. Comradeship is
the true basis of--but perhaps you have read my articles on the subject
on the Woman's Page of the _Daily Trail_. I always advise girls to
marry men of their own temperament. As a matter of fact, I expect they
marry the men who are easiest to land, but you're not allowed to say
things like that (on the Woman's Page). We have pure and noble ideals,
we are tender, motherly and housewifely (on the Woman's Page).

Henry and I were of the same temperament. For one thing, we were
equally incompetent at golf. Perhaps I foozled my drive rather worse
than Henry, but then he never took fewer than five strokes on the
green, whereas I have occasionally done it in four. Then we mutually
detested gramophones. But when we discovered that we could both play
'Caller Herrin'' on the piano with one finger (entirely by ear) we felt
that we were affinities, and got married shortly afterwards.

Stevenson once said, 'Marriage is not a bed of roses; it is a field of
battle.' At the epoch of which I write Henry and I had not got to
turning machine-guns on each other. At the most we only had diplomatic
unpleasantnesses. The position, however, was getting strained. I
realized quite clearly that if we didn't obtain domestic help of some
sort very soon it might come to open hostilities. Isn't it surprising
how the petty annoyances of life can wear away the strong bulwarks of
trust and friendship formed by years of understanding? Our particular
bulwarks were becoming quite shaky through nothing else but having to
muddle through the dull sordid grind of cooking and housework by
ourselves. We were getting disillusioned with each other. No
'jaundiced eye that casts discolouration' could look more jaundiced
than Henry's when I asked him to dry up the dinner things.

Having explained all this, you will now understand something of my
feelings when, on going to answer a knock at the door, I was confronted
by a solid female who said she had been sent from the Registry Office.
Oh, thrice blesse