ains to guard my conduct, lest I should implant the suspicion
that might hasten what I feared. I remained, desperately, the same as
ever, and so, of course, was not the same, for a deed done defiantly
bears little resemblance to a deed done naturally. I was always
considering what I should say, how I should act, even how I should
look. To live now was sedulous instead of easy. Effort took the place
of simplicity. My wife and I were gazing furtively at each other through
the eye-holes of masks. I knew it. Did she?

At that time I never ceased to wonder. Of one thing I was certain,
however--that Margot began to devise excuses for being left alone. When
we first came home she could hardly endure me out of her sight. Now she
grew to appreciate solitude. This was a terrible danger signal, and I
could not fail to so regard it.

Yet something within me held me back from speaking out. I made no
comment on the change that deepened day by day, but I watched my wife
furtively, with a concentration of attention that sometimes left me
physically exhausted. I felt, too, at length, that I was growing morbid,
that suspicion coloured my mind and caused me, perhaps, to put a wrong
interpretation on many of her actions, to exaggerate and misconstrue
the most simple things she did. I began to believe her every look
premeditated. Even if she kissed me, I thought she did it with a
purpose; if she smiled up at me as of old, I fancied the smile to be
only a concealment of its opposite. By degrees we became shy of each
other. We were like uncongenial intimates, forced to occupy the same
house, forced into a fearful knowledge of each other's personal habits,
while we knew nothing of the thoughts that make up the true lives of
individuals.

And then another incident occurred, a pendant to the incident of
Margot's strange denied visit to the room she affected to fear. It was
one night, one deep dark night of the autumn--a season to affect even a
cheerful mind and incline it towards melancholy. Margot and I were now
often silent when we were together. That evening, towards nine, a dull
steady rain set in. I remember I heard it on the window-panes as we sat
in the drawing-room after dinner, and remarked on it, saying to her that
if it continued for two or three days she might chance to see the floods
out, and that fishermen would descend upon us by the score.

I did not obtain much response from her. The dreariness of the weather
seemed to affec