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-