But, on the whole, they play the game rather well in the fifth and sixth years of their married life. The husband takes the rough with the smooth. In spite of occasional bad tempers, in spite of grievances which are growing into habits of mind, he is a good fellow and--he thanks heaven his wife is happy. CHAPTER IV It is the seventh year. The wife is still doing exactly what she did in the fifth and sixth years. Her daily routine is exactly the same. Except that she can afford extra little luxuries now, and indulge in more expensive kinds of pleasure--stalls at the theatre instead of seats in the pit, an occasional visit to the opera, an easy yielding to temptations in the way of hats. Her husband has been “getting on,” and he is glad to give her what she wants. But somehow or other she is beginning to realize that she has not got what she wants. She does not know what she wants, but she knows that there is a great lack of something in her life. She is still “playing the game,” but there is no longer the same sport in it. The sharp edge of her interest in things has worn off. It has been dulled down. She goes languidly through the days and a matinée jaunt no longer thrills her with a little excitement. The plays are so boring, full of stale old plots, stale old women, stale old tricks. She is sick of them. She still reads a great number of romantic novels, but how insufferably tedious they have become! How false they are! How cloying is all this sickly sentiment! She searches about for the kind of novel which used to frighten her, problem novels, dangerous novels, novels dealing with real problems of life. They still frighten her a little, some of them, but she likes the sensation. She wants more of it. She wants to plunge deeper into the dangerous problems, to get nearer to the truth of things. She broods over their revelations. She searches out the meaning of their suggestions, their hints, their innuendoes. It is like drug-drinking. This poisonous fiction stimulates her for a little while, until the effect of it has worn off and leaves her with an aching head. Her head often aches now. And her heart aches--though goodness knows why. Everything is so stale. The gossip of her women friends is, oh--so stale! She has heard all their stories about all their servants, all their philosophy about the servant problem in general, all their shallow little views about life, and love, and marriage. She has found them all out, their vanities, their little selfish ways, their little lies and shams and fooleries. They are exactly like herself. She has been brought up in the same code, shaped in the same mould, cut out to the same pattern. Their ideas are her ideas. Their ways of life her ways. They bore her exceedingly.