s,
these isolations, which young married couples arrange with the
permission of their parents, as nothing else than a license to engage in
debauchery.

"I saw, then, in this nothing bad or shameful, and, hoping for great
joys, I began to live the honeymoon. And very certainly none of these
joys followed. But I had faith, and was determined to have them,
cost what they might. But the more I tried to secure them, the less
I succeeded. All this time I felt anxious, ashamed, and weary. Soon I
began to suffer. I believe that on the third or fourth day I found my
wife sad and asked her the reason. I began to embrace her, which in my
opinion was all that she could desire. She put me away with her hand,
and began to weep.

"At what? She could not tell me. She was filled with sorrow, with
anguish. Probably her tortured nerves had suggested to her the truth
about the baseness of our relations, but she found no words in which to
say it. I began to question her; she answered that she missed her absent
mother. It seemed to me that she was not telling the truth. I sought to
console her by maintaining silence in regard to her parents. I did not
imagine that she felt herself simply overwhelmed, and that her parents
had nothing to do with her sorrow. She did not listen to me, and I
accused her of caprice. I began to laugh at her gently. She dried her
tears, and began to reproach me, in hard and wounding terms, for my
selfishness and cruelty.

"I looked at her. Her whole face expressed hatred, and hatred of me. I
cannot describe to you the fright which this sight gave me. 'How? What?'
thought I, 'love is the unity of souls, and here she hates me? Me? Why?
But it is impossible! It is no longer she!'

"I tried to calm her. I came in conflict with an immovable and cold
hostility, so that, having no time to reflect, I was seized with keen
irritation. We exchanged disagreeable remarks. The impression of this
first quarrel was terrible. I say quarrel, but the term is inexact. It
was the sudden discovery of the abyss that had been dug between us. Love
was exhausted with the satisfaction of sensuality. We stood face to
face in our true light, like two egoists trying to procure the greatest
possible enjoyment, like two individuals trying to mutually exploit each
other.

"So what I called our quarrel was our actual situation as it appeared
after the satisfaction of sensual desire. I did not realize that this
cold hostility was our normal st