Arthur became listless and indifferent. The perfection of love that
had been our marriage failed without warning, and yet by imperceptible
gradations. My awakening to the fact was, however, altogether sudden.
It was one summer evening; we were paddling on the Cam. One of Arthur’s
pupils, also in a Canadian canoe, challenged us to a race. At Magdalen
Bridge we 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 fatigue, 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 constant and increasing. I
was at this time twenty-three years old. You wonder that I write with
such serious attitude of mind. I sometimes think that I have never had
any thoughts of my own; that I have always been reading the thoughts
of another, or perhaps of Nature. I seem only to have been a woman in
those first few months of marriage.