"For I can't deny that I failed to like her wholly, no matter how hard I tried. Something about her repelled me subtly, and I could not help weaving morbid and macabre associations about everything connected with her. Her complexion called up thoughts of Babylon, Atlantis, Lemuria, and the terrible forgotten dominations of an elder world; her eyes struck me sometimes as the eyes of some unholy forest creature or animal-goddess too immeasurably ancient to be fully human; and her hair--that dense, exotic, overnourished growth of oily jet--made one shiver as a great black python might have done. There was no doubt but that she realized my involuntary attitude, though I tried to hide it, and she tried to hide the fact that she noticed it. "Yet the boy's infatuation lasted. He positively fawned on her, and overdid all the little gallantries of daily life to a sickening degree. She appeared to return the feeling, though I could see it took a conscious effort to make her duplicate his enthusiasms and extravagances. For one thing, I think she was piqued to learn that we weren't as wealthy as she had expected. "It was a bad business all told. I could see that sad undercurrents were arising. Denis was half hypnotized with puppy-love, and began to grow away from me as he felt my shrinking from his wife. This kind of thing went on for months, and I saw that I was losing my only son, the boy who had formed the center of all my thoughts and acts for the past quarter of a century. "Marceline seemed to be a good wife enough in those early months, and our friends received her without any quibbling or questioning. I was always nervous, though, about what some of the young fellows in Paris might write home to their relatives after the news of the marriage spread around. Despite the woman's love of secrecy, it couldn't remain hidden forever; indeed Denis had written a few of his closest friends, in strict confidence, as soon as he was settled with her at Riverside. "I got to staying more and more alone in my room with my failing health as an excuse. It was about that time that my present spinal neuritis began to develop. Denis didn't seem to notice the trouble, or take any interest in me and my habits and affairs; and it hurt me to see how callous he was getting. I began to get sleepless, and often racked my brain in the night to try to find out what really was the matter--what it really was that made my new daughter-in-law so repulsive and even dimly horrible to me.