r and all around her,
till the outlines I had known were slightly blurred. Her disposition,
which had been so clear cut, so sharply, beautifully defined, standing
out in its innocent glory for all men to see, seemed to withdraw itself,
as if a dawning necessity for secrecy had arisen. A thin crust of
reserve began to subtly overspread her every act and expression. She
thought now before she spoke; she thought before she looked. It seemed
to me that she was becoming a slightly different person.

The change I mean to imply is very difficult to describe. It was not
abrupt enough to startle, but I could feel it, slight though it was.
Have you seen the first flat film of waveless water, sent by the
incoming tides of the sea, crawling silently up over the wrinkled brown
sand, and filling the tiny ruts, till diminutive hills and valleys are
all one smooth surface? So it was with Margot. A tide flowed over her
character, a waveless tide of reserve. The hills and valleys which I
loved disappeared from my ken. Behind the old sweet smile, the old frank
expression, my wife was shrinking down to hide herself, as one escaping
from pursuit hides behind a barrier. When one human being knows another
very intimately, and all the barricades that divide soul from soul have
been broken down, it is difficult to set them up again without noise and
dust, and the sound of thrust-in bolts, and the tap of the hammer that
drives in the nails. It is difficult, but not impossible. Barricades
can be raised noiselessly, soundless bolts--that keep out the soul--be
pushed home. The black gauze veil that blots out the scene drops, and
when it is raised--if ever--the scene is changed.

The real Margot was receding from me. I felt it with an impotence of
despair that was benumbing. Yet I could not speak of it, for at first I
could hardly tell if she knew of what was taking place. Indeed, at this
moment, in thinking it over, I do not believe that for some time she had
any definite cognisance of the fact that she was growing to love me
less passionately than of old. In acts she was not changed. That was the
strange part of the matter. Her kisses were warm, but I believed them
premeditated. She clasped my hand in hers, but now there was more
mechanism than magic in that act of tenderness. Impulse failed within
her; and she had been all impulse? Did she know it? At that time I
wondered. Believing that she did not know she was changing, I was at the
greatest p