Or at any time?
He sometimes wondered.

Certainly happy marriages were rare and divorces many.

Fine weather nearly all the year round played the deuce with domesticity, and his business could not be neglected for the long vacation abroad to which they both had looked forward so ardently.
Sometimes, even before this vague gray mist had risen between them, he had had moments of wondering whether he knew his wife at all.

How could a man know a woman who did not yet know herself?
He sighed and wished he had more time to explore the uncharted seas of a woman's soul.
But the cause of the change in her was something far less picturesque, something concrete and sinister.

He felt sure of that....
VII Unless--but that was ridiculous! Impossible! He sprang to his feet, incredulous, disgusted at the mere thought.
But why not?
She was very young, and older and wiser women were afflicted with inconsistencies, little tenacious desires and vanities never quite to be grasped by the elemental male.
He went over to a bookcase containing heavy works of reference and pressed his index finger into the molding.