SSING-ROOM.

Faber did not reach home till a few minutes before the dinner hour. He
rode into the stable-yard, entered the house by the surgery, and went
straight to his dressing-room; for the roads were villianous, and
Ruber's large feet had made a wonderful sight of his master, who
respected his wife's carpet. At the same time he hoped, as it was so
near dinner-time, to find her in her chamber. She had, however, already
made her toilet, and was waiting his return in the drawing-room. Her
heart made a false motion and stung her when she heard his steps pass
the door and go up stairs, for generally he came to greet her the moment
he entered the house.--Had he seen any body!--Had he heard any thing? It
was ten dreadful minutes before he came down, but he entered cheerily,
with the gathered warmth of two days of pent-up affection. She did her
best to meet him as if nothing had happened. For indeed what had
happened--except her going to church? If nothing had taken place since
she saw him--since she knew him--why such perturbation? Was marriage a
slavery of the very soul, in which a wife was bound to confess every
thing to her husband, even to her most secret thoughts and feelings? Or
was a husband lord not only over the present and future of his wife, but
over her past also? Was she bound to disclose every thing that lay in
that past? If Paul made no claim upon her beyond the grave, could he
claim back upon the dead past before he knew her, a period over which
she had now no more control than over that when she would be but a
portion of the material all?

But whatever might be Paul's theories of marriage or claims upon his
wife, it was enough for her miserable unrest that she was what is called
a living soul, with a history, and what has come to be called a
conscience--a something, that is, as most people regard it, which has
the power, and uses it, of making uncomfortable.

The existence of such questions as I have indicated reveals that already
between her and him there showed space, separation, non-contact: Juliet
was too bewildered with misery to tell whether it was a cleft of a
hair's breadth, or a gulf across which no cry could reach; this moment
it seemed the one, the next the other. The knowledge which caused it had
troubled her while he sought her love, had troubled her on to the very
eve of her surrender. The deeper her love grew the more fiercely she
wrestled with the evil fact. A low moral development and