Angry retort usually followed on these occasions, and periods of coldness ensued, the effect of which was to produce states of alienation.
If a babe had come to soften the heart of Irene, to turn thought and feeling in a new direction, to awaken a mother's love with all its holy tenderness, how different would all have been!--different with her, and different with him.

There would then have been an object on which both could centre interest and affection, and thus draw lovingly together again, and feel, as in the beginning, heart beating to heart in sweet accordings.

They would have learned their love-lessons over again, and understood their meanings better.

Alas that the angels of infancy found no place in their dwelling! With no central attraction at home, her thoughts stimulated by association with a class of intellectual, restless women, who were wandering on life's broad desert in search of green places and refreshing springs, each day's journey bearing them farther and farther away from landscapes of perpetual verdure, Irene grew more and more interested in subjects that lay for the most part entirely out of the range of her husband's sympathies; while he was becoming more deeply absorbed in a profession that required close application of thought, intellectual force and clearness, and cold, practical modes of looking at all questions that came up for consideration.
The consequence was that they were, in all their common interests, modes of thinking and habits of regarding the affairs of life, steadily receding from each other.

Their evenings were now less frequently spent together.