But how kind still the words, and how gentle the tone; and they lie down side by side in the marriage-bed,--brain plotting against brain, heart loathing heart.

It is a duel of life and death between those sworn through life and beyond death at the altar.

But it is carried on with all the forms and courtesies of duel in the age of chivalry.

No conjugal wrangling, no slip of the tongue; the oil is on the surface of the wave,--the monsters in the hell of the abyss war invisibly below.

At length, a dull torpor creeps over the woman; she feels the taint in her veins,--the slow victory is begun.