ough he does not pretend to be above the ordinary frailties
and failings of human nature, tries honestly, for many years, to make
her happy. Time after time does this domestic Sisyphus roll the stone of
contentment up the hill of his wife's temper, and time after time does
it slip from his hands, and go clattering down into the plain of
despair. The Martyr is a very virtuous lady, yet she is not satisfied
with the calm and acknowledged possession of her virtues. She adds them
to her armoury of aggravation, and uses them with a deadly effect. Her
morality is irreproachable. She studies to make it a reproach to her
husband, and, inasmuch as her temper is equally compounded of the most
persistent obstinacy, and the most perverse and unaccountable caprices,
it is unnecessary to say that she succeeds marvellously in her
undertaking.

As a girl, the Martyr will have been distinguished by a keen sense of
wrong, and a total lack of all sense of humour. Having been rebuked by
her mother for some trifling fault, she will persuade herself that her
parents detest her, and desire her death. She will spend the next few
days with her breast luxuriously against the thorn of her fancied
sufferings. She will weave romances, in order to enjoy the delicious
sensation of looking on as she withers under injustice into a premature
coffin, and of watching her cruel parents as they water the grave of
their victim with unavailing tears. A somewhat lax method of bringing up
will have enabled her to read many trashy novels. Out of these she
constructs an imaginary hero, all gushing tenderness and a tawny
moustache. Having met a young man who fully realises her ideal in the
latter particular, she promptly assumes his possession of the former,
and accepts his proposal of marriage. After having all but thrown him
over on three or four occasions for an insufficient display of romantic
devotion at dances and tennis parties, she eventually marries him. Soon
afterwards she discovers that he is not a chivalrous wind-bag, but a
Man, whereupon she shatters his pedestal, and abandons herself to misery
amidst the ruins.

And now the full joys of her married martyrdom begin. She withdraws even
from the affectation of interest in her partner, his friends and his
pursuits. She spends her mornings in the keeping of a diary, or the
writing of a novel, in which she appoints herself to the post of
heroine, and endows her creation with a superhuman combination of
u