Ellen had been married fourteen years, and was the mother of five children, when my story begins.  The years had gone in the main peacefully and pleasantly.  The children, three girls and two boys, were fair and strong.  Their life had been a very quiet one, for our village was far removed from excitements of all kinds.  It was one of the suburban villages of ——­, and most of the families living there were the families of merchants or lawyers doing business in the town, going in early in the morning, and returning late at night.  There is usually in such communities a strange lack of social intercourse; whether it be that the daily departure and return of the head of the family keeps up a perpetual succession of small crises of interest to the exclusion of others, or that the night finds all the fathers and brothers too tired to enjoy anything but slippers and cigars, I know not; but certain it is that all such suburban villages are unspeakably dull and lifeless.  There is barely feeling enough of good neighborhood to keep up the ordinary interchange of the commonest civilities.

Except for long visits to the city in the winter, and long journeys in the summer, I myself should have found life insupportably tedious.  But Ellen was absolutely content.  Her days were unvaryingly alike, a simple routine of motherly duties and housekeeping cares.  Her evenings were equally unvaried, being usually spent in sewing or reading, while her husband, in seven evenings out of ten, dozed, either on the sofa, or on one of the children’s little beds in the nursery.  His exquisite tenderness to the children, and his quiet delight in simply being where they were, were the brightest points in John Gray’s character and life.

Such monotony was not good for either of them.  He grew more and more dreamy and inert.  She insensibly but continually narrowed and hardened, and, without dreaming of such a thing, really came to be less and less a part of her husband’s inner life.  Faithful, busy, absorbed herself in the cares of each day, she never observed that he was living more and more in his children and his reveries, and withdrawing more and more from her.  She did not need constant play and interchange of sentiment as he did.  Affectionate, loyal, devoted as she was, there was a side of husband’s nature which she did not see nor satisfy, perhaps, never could.  But neither of them knew it.

At this time Mr. Gray was offered a position of importance in the city, and it became necessary for them to move there to live.  How I rejoiced in the change.  How bitterly I regretted it before two years had passed.