there is hardly a happening that I remember, unless
it be the disillusion of the death of Marie's rich godmother, who left
us nothing. There was the failure of the Pocard scheme, which was only
a swindle and ruined many small people. Politics pervaded the scandal,
while certain people hurried with their money to Monsieur Boulaque,
whose scheme was much more safe and substantial. There was also my
father-in-law's illness and his death, which was a great shock to
Marie, and put us into black clothes.

I have not changed. Marie _has_ somewhat. She has got stouter; her
eyelids look tired and red, and she buries herself in silences. We are
no longer quite in accord in details of our life. She who once always
said "Yes," is now primarily disposed to say "No." If I insist she
defends her opinion, obstinately, sourly; and sometimes dishonestly.
For example, in the matter of pulling down the partition downstairs, if
people had heard our high voices they would have thought there was a
quarrel. Following some of our discussions, she keeps her face
contracted and spiteful, or assumes the martyr's air, and sometimes
there are moments of hatred between us.

Often she says, while talking of something else, "Ah, if we had had a
child, all would have been different!"

I am becoming personally negligent, through a sort of idleness, against
which I have not sufficient grounds for reaction. When we are by
ourselves, at meal times, my hands are sometimes questionable. From
day to day, and from month to month, I defer going to the dentist and
postpone the attention required. I am allowing my molars to get
jagged.

Marie never shows any jealousy, nor even suspicion about my personal
adventures. Her trust is almost excessive! She is not very
far-seeing, or else I am nothing very much to her, and I have a grudge
against her for this indifference.

And now I see around me women who are too young to love me. That most
positive of obstacles, the age difference, begins to separate me from
the amorous. And yet I am not surfeited with love, and I yearn towards
youth! Marthe, my little sister-in-law, said to me one day, "Now that
you're old----" That a child of fifteen years, so freshly dawned and
really new, can bring herself to pass this artless judgment on a man of
thirty-five--that is fate's first warning, the first sad day which
tells us at midsummer that winter will come.

One evening, as I entered the room, I indistinc