d intelligent woman.

It was in the course of the year after the birth of the child that I
became aware that something had gone wrong; a shadow seemed to have
fallen upon them. I became aware in the course of a few days which I
spent with them in a little house by the sea, which they had taken for
the summer, that all was not well. My friend seemed to me distrait and
heavy-hearted; his wife seemed to be pathetically affectionate and
anxious. There was no indifference or harshness apparent in his manner
to her; indeed, he seemed to me to be extraordinarily considerate and
tender. One day--we had gone off in the morning for a long ramble on
the cliffs, leaving his wife in the company of an old school friend of
hers who had come to stay with them--he suddenly said to me, with a
determined air, that he wished to consult me on a point. I expressed
the utmost readiness to be of use, and wondered in an agitated way what
the matter could be; but he was silent for so long--we were sitting on
a grassy headland high above a broad, calm expanse of summer sea--that
I wondered if he had repented of his resolution. At last he spoke. I
will not attempt to reproduce his words, but he said to me, with an
astonishing calmness, that he found that he was ceasing to care for his
wife: he said very quietly that it was not that he cared for anyone
else, but that his marriage had been a mistake; that he had engaged
himself in a moment of passion, and that this had subsequently
evaporated. In the days of his first love he had poured out his heart
to his wife, and now he no longer desired to do so; he did not wish any
more to share his thoughts with her, and he was aware that she was
conscious of this; he said that it was infinitely pathetic and
distressing to him to see the efforts that she made to regain his
confidence, and that he tried as far as he could to talk to her freely,
but that he had no longer any sincere desire to do it, and that the
effort was acutely painful; he was, he said, deeply distressed that she
should be bound to him, and he indicated that he was fully aware that
her own affection for him had undergone no change, and that it was not
likely to do so. He asked me what he had better do. Should he continue
to struggle with his reluctance to communicate his feelings to her;
should he endeavour to make her acquiesce in altered relations; should
he tell her frankly what had happened; or should he--he confessed that
he would prefe