The Stratagem and Other Stories

were a length ahead—suddenly I heard my husband’s thought. It was the most hideous and horrible laugh that it is possible to conceive. No devil could laugh so. I screamed, and dropped my paddle. Both the men thought me ill. I assured myself that it was not the laugh of some townee on the bridge, distorted by my over- sensitive organization. I said no more; Arthur looked grave. At night he asked abruptly after a long period of brooding, “Was that my thought?” I could only stammer that I did not know. Incidentally he complained of fa- tigue, and the listlessness, which before had seemed nothing to me, assumed a ghastly shape. There was something in him that was not he! The indifference had appeared transitory; I now became aware of it as con- stant and increasing. I was at this time twenty-three years old. You wonder that I write with such serious atti- tude of mind. I sometimes think that I have never had any thoughts of my own; that I have always been read- ing the thoughts of another, or perhaps of Nature. I seem only to have been a woman in those first few months of marriage. VII The six months following held for me nothing out of the ordinary, save that six or seven times I had dreams, vivid and terrible. Arthur had no share in these; yet I knew, I cannot say how, that they were his dreams and not mine; or rather that they were in his subconscious waking self, for one occurred in the afternoon, when he was out shooting, and not in the least asleep. The last of them occurred towards the end of the October term. He was lecturing as usual, I was at home, lethargic after a too heavy breakfast following a wakeful night. I saw suddenly a picture of the lecture-room, enormously greater than in reality, so that it filled all space; and in the rostrum, bulging over it in all direc-