After Helen’s departure, Douglas Briggs felt a curious mingling of relief and depression. It was a relief not to have to face the constant rebuke that the sight of her gave him; and yet it depressed him during the day to think that when he returned home he should not find her there. He realized now many things about himself that he had been unconscious of before. In the happy time that seemed so far away now, during the stress of work, how he had loved to think of her at home there with the children. What a comfort it was just to know they were there and to feel that they were safe. And then, the walk home, with the expectation of finding the children and Helen in the nursery. The glad welcome! Then--but at this point he had to force himself to think of other things. That happiness could never be the same because in her eyes he could never be the same man. She must ever look back on those days with a kind of shame; she must feel that he had deceived her, that through it all he had been a hypocrite. With her severe standards she must think that he had never been what she believed him to be. She would judge him by that perfect father of hers, by her sturdy older brother, and by the two brothers who had entered the Church. At other times he would accuse himself of wronging her; she could not judge him so harshly; she could not put aside altogether the love she had once had for him. The love she had once had! He would feel a shock of horror. Why, she must have it still; she had told him a thousand times that nothing could change her love for him. After the children came they used to say that much as they loved the children they loved each other a thousand times more. And how they used to wonder if other husbands and wives loved as they did. They used to laugh and say that perhaps to other people they seemed as commonplace as others did to them. After a time he resolved to discipline himself when these thoughts came; if he were to indulge them, they would make life unbearable. He wondered vaguely if she ever had such thoughts now. Once they used to believe that they often had the same thoughts. In this way, in spite of his efforts, he found himself going back to his morbid fancies. Sometimes, on the other hand, he became rebellious and he pitied himself as a man unjustly and inhumanely treated. No woman had a right to treat a man like that, a man who had always tried to be good to her, too. No woman had a right to expect her husband to be perfect.