So her husband began to go to the comic opera and the social dance alone or with a man friend. And he began to find it difficult to converse with his wife on any subject of mutual interest. He felt she was greatly his superior, and he was ofttimes very lonely. He did not give vent to many spontaneous witticisms as of old, and for the first time he felt he was ageing. His wife talked of matters, and books, and theories of life which seemed a million miles away from his sphere of thought. As time passed she grew more and more spiritual, and she tried to make him realise that he was on a very carnal plane, and that his whole understanding of life was wrong. She indulged in long fasts; she went into her closet for meditation, when he was alone in the house; and she refused him the expressions of love which of old had been spontaneously given. She told him love was a thing of the spirit, that it needed no physical expression. She read from books of ancient lore, and tried to make him see that only by living in the spirit, wholly, could we make a place for ourselves in the great spiritual kingdoms of the universe, or develop our highest powers here. For two long years the man tried to live on and make the best of his position, but the wife had undertaken an impossible task. She had striven to change a wholesome, happy, good-hearted, loving human being, into an intellectual æsthetic; to turn a wit into a profound philosopher; to paralyse normal and natural instincts and appetites, and to force the man to live only in the spirit, while yet in the body. After two years the bad husband developed. He went where he found pleasure, mirth, good food, good company. He allowed his wife to go her way; he went his. They met at the divorce court. There was no trouble about her obtaining the divorce. Statutory grounds were given and proved. The children were given to the wife. The woman who had won him away from his wife, according to public comment, was a wholly inferior person. Then it was remarked that his wife was always quite his superior; and that he had, by the natural law of the world, gone down to his own level. His wife received the sympathy of the whole community; and he was understood to be one of those bad men who are incapable of appreciating a good woman. VI The sixth bad husband was supposed to be quite a model young man until he married the girl who was too good for him. She was too good for any man, so everybody said. Such a pretty girl and a perfect housekeeper. Her mother had been an invalid, and the daughter had always taken care of the home after her mother died. She was a nurse for all the sick people in the neighbourhood; and so unselfish with her time, and strength, and money in doing for the poor. The young man felt that he was rushing in where angels fear to tread, when he asked her to be his wife; and he regarded her as something little short of divinity.