I_t is the Eighth Year_. The wife does not know the significance of that. The husband goes on his way without seeing the ghosts that have invaded his little household. He is too busy to see. The whole energy of his mind now is devoted to the business of his life. He must earn money, more money, still more money, because expenses still keep increasing, by leaps and bounds. He finds it more and more difficult to cut his coat according to his cloth. He is often surprised because with a much larger income he seems to be just as “hard up” as when he started the adventure of marriage. He wonders, sometimes, whether the game is worth the candle. What does he get out of it? Precious little. Not much fun. In the evenings he is tired, although his brain is still worrying over the details of his work, over his business disappointments and difficulties, and plans. Now and again he is surprised at the strange quietude and lassitude of his wife. He catches a look of tragedy in her eyes, and it startles him for a moment, so that he asks her if she is feeling unwell. She laughs, in a mirthless way, and seems to resent the question. “Perfectly well, thanks,” she says. He shrugs his shoulders. He cannot bother about a woman’s whims and moods. Women are queer kittle-cattle. He can’t make ‘em out. Even his own wife is a perfect mystery to him. It is a pity they get on each other’s nerves so much. What more does she want? He has given her everything a woman may desire--a beautiful little home, many little luxuries, plenty of pin-money. He does not stint her. It is he that does the stinting. He is always working for her so that she may play. However--work is best. To do our job in life is the best philosophy. So the husband has on one side the passing suspicion that something is wrong with his wife, and the wife hides her heart from him. Something _is_ wrong with her. Everything is wrong, though she does not know why and how. She feels lonely--horribly lonely in spite of all her friends. She feels like a woman alone in a great desert with no other human soul near her, thrust back upon her own thoughts, brooding over her own misery. There is a great emptiness in her heart, and she has a great hunger and a great thirst of soul which she cannot satisfy. Nothing satisfies that empty, barren heart of hers, that throbbing brain. She has finished with Mudie’s novels. She can find no satisfaction in _them_. She revolts from the tittle-tattle of her women friends. That is no longer amusing. She finds no pleasure in the beauty of her face. It is no longer beautiful. She hates the sight of her face in the glass. She is afraid of those big wistful eyes which stare at her. She is sick to death of dressing herself up. How futile it is! How utterly vain and foolish!