Some such experience, generally and fortunately limited to comparatively short though different periods, is not infrequently felt and is often a source of secret distress and anguish to the young wife whose sense of loyalty to the man she loves and married bars her from the relief of talking of these feelings. As is now beginning to be realized, emotions deeply experienced which are deliberately suppressed, may have far reaching effects even on the health. It is, therefore, well that she should know what is, I am sure, the truth, that this physical repugnance, which sometimes even amounts to a detestation of sharing the same house with the husband, and a desire to escape even from the superficial contact of eating in the same room with him, is a temporary phase, possibly phylogenetic[4] in its origin. [4] That is to say, repeating the history of our very early ancestors, where the female probably felt some resentment towards the male who had encompassed her maternity, and who most certainly would live apart from her and not in the ordinary contact of a united life. This passing phase, whether it lasts a few days or months, is neither necessary nor absolutely universal, but so far as I can ascertain it appears to be a common occurrence in the lives of the more sensitive and tenderly loving of wives. Where the coming child has not been desired by both parents, and where the mother resents her coming maternity, there is, of course, a totally different problem for which there is a very obvious reason. I am speaking now only of the mother-to-be who deeply desires her child, who is physically healthy and well formed, living under comfortable, protected and happy conditions, and who ardently loves and is loved by her husband; it is she who may and most frequently does feel this passing phase of intense physical antagonism. That she loves, and consciously loves, gives her an outward control so that this under-current of inherent antagonism is not allowed to show, and is gallantly concealed from the whole world. She would feel it an intense disloyalty to speak of it to any living soul, but it is there and it is so often a source of distress and strain upon the nervous system that it should be openly faced instead of being as it now is a repressed feeling. This repression tends to result in one of the greatest difficulties of the _healthy_ woman who is carrying a child, namely sleeplessness. The complex balance of her nervous control is strained by her surprise at herself, and perhaps by her self-reproaches, and thus she has an unnecessary burden in addition to the one of the coming child. This phase, therefore, is not a fact to be ignored or treated too lightly, and while it lasts it should be respected so far as is compatible with the circumstances of the two and with due regard for the mother. It is not a thing either to fear or to be ashamed of. It is perhaps best openly faced as a fact of rather