Marie struggled and fought as if she had been caught in a trap. On her first attempt to hoodwink me she was severely taken to task by the women. For the first time in my life I found the fair sex entirely on my side; henceforth she had to play second fiddle. The friendly intercourse with the officers braced me; their manners influenced mine; and after ten years of spiritual emasculation my manhood reasserted itself.
I let my hair grow as it liked, and abolished the fringe on which Marie had insisted; my voice, which had grown thin from everlastingly speaking in soothing tones to a woman, regained its former volume. The hollows in my cheeks filled out, and although I was now beginning my fortieth year my whole physique gained in strength and vigour.
I was friendly with all the women in the house, and soon fell into the habit of taking a very active part in the conversation, while Marie, poor, unpopular Marie, once again sat in silence.
She began to be afraid of me. One morning, for the first time in the last six years of our marriage, she appeared fully dressed in my bedroom before I was up. I could not understand this sudden move, but we had a stormy scene, during which she admitted that she was jealous of the girl who came into my room every morning to light the fire in my stove.
"And I do detest your new ways!" she exclaimed. "I hate this so-called manliness, and loathe you when you give yourself airs!"
Well, I knew that it had always been the page, the lap-dog, the weakling, "her child" that she loved. The virago never loves virility in her husband, however much she may admire it elsewhere.
I became more and more popular with the women. I sought their society; my whole nature was expanding in the friendly warmth which they emanated, these true women, who inspired the respectful love, the genuine devotion which a man only feels for a womanly woman.
We were discussing our return home. But again my old suspicions tormented me. I shrank from the renewal of old relations with former friends, some of whom might quite conceivably have been my wife's lovers. To put an end to my doubts, I determined to cross-examine her, for my letters to friends in Sweden had been so much waste of paper. I had been unable to elicit a candid statement.
Everybody pitied the "mother." No one cared whether or not the "father" would be ruined by the ridicule which threatened to befall him.