It is men like Colonel Bellairs who hold the recipe for calling it into existence.
Mrs.Bellairs, a beautiful woman, with high spirits, but not high-spirited, became more and more silent and apathetic year by year, yielded more and more and more, yielded at last without expostulation equally at every point, when she should have yielded and when she should have stood firm, yielded at last even where her children's health and well-being were concerned.
Apathy and health are seldom housemates for long together.

Mrs.Bellairs gradually declined from her chair to her sofa.

She made no effort to live after her youngest daughter was born.

She could have done so if she had wished it, but she seemed to have no wish on the subject, or on any other subject.

There is an Arabian proverb which seems to embody in it all the melancholy of the desert, and Mrs.Bellairs exemplified it.