THREE weeks after that day Isaac and Rebecca were man and wife. All that was hopelessly dogged and stubborn in the man’s moral nature seemed to have closed round his fatal passion, and to have fixed¹ it unassailably in his heart.

After that first interview in the cottage parlor² no consideration would induce Mrs. Scatchard to see her son’s wife again or even to talk of her when Isaac tried hard to plead her cause after their marriage.

This course of conduct was not in any degree occasioned by a discovery of the degradation³ in which Rebecca had lived. There was no question of that between mother and son. There was no question of anything but the fearfully-exact resemblance between the living, breathing woman and the specter-woman of Isaac’s dream.

Rebecca on her side neither felt nor expressed the slightest sorrow at the estrangement⁴ between herself and her mother-in-law. Isaac, for the sake of peace, had never contradicted her first idea that age and long illness had affected⁵ Mrs. Scatchard’s mind. He even allowed his wife to upbraid⁶ him for not having confessed this to her at the time of their marriage engagement, rather than risk anything by hinting at the truth. The sacrifice of his integrity before his one all-mastering delusion⁷ seemed but a small thing, and cost his conscience but little after the sacrifices he had already made.

The time of waking from this delusion — the cruel and the rueful time — was not far off. After some quiet months of married life, as the summer was ending, and the year was getting on toward the month of his birthday, Isaac found his wife altering toward him. She grew sullen⁸ and contemptuous; she formed acquaintances of the most dangerous kind in

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