After a month of the closest companionship Marie was laid up with a premature confinement. We had a tiny daughter, hardly able to draw breath. Without a moment's delay the baby was taken charge of by a nurse whom we knew to be a decent woman, and two days later it passed away as it had come, without pain, from sheer want of vitality, just after it had received private baptism.
The mother received the news with regret, but it was regret not unmingled with relief. A burden of infinite cares and worries had fallen off her shoulders, for well she knew that social prejudice would not have permitted her to keep the prematurely-born infant under our own roof.
After this incident we firmly made up our minds to one thing: No more children! We dreamed of a life together, a life of perfect comradeship, of a man and a woman, loving and supplementing each other, but living their own lives, restlessly straining every nerve to realise their individual ambitions.
Now that every obstacle had been removed, every threatening danger overcome, we began to breathe freely and reconsider our position. I was ostracised by my relations, no meddlesome member of my family threatened the peace of our home, and since the only relative of my wife's who lived on the spot was her aunt, we were spared the frequent calls and visits which so often give rise to serious troubles and trials in a young ménage.
[II]
Six weeks later I made the discovery that two intruders had insinuated themselves into my wife's confidence.
One of them was a dog, a King Charles, a blear-eyed little monster, which greeted me with deafening yelping and barking every time I entered the house, just as if I had been a stranger. I always disliked dogs, those protectors of cowards who lack the courage to fight an assailant themselves; but I particularly disliked this dog, because it was a relic of her first marriage, a constant reminder of her late husband.
The first time I protested, and ordered it to lie down, my wife reproached me gently, and made excuses for the little beast, which she called her late daughter's legacy, pretending to be horror-struck at this suddenly revealed strain of cruelty in my disposition.
One day I found traces of the little monster on the drawing-room carpet. I punished it, and she called me a coward who ill-treated dumb creatures.