He goes on and on, hoping that to-morrow will bring something better than to-day,--hoping that this thing or that thing or the other thing will bring a change, and that in some indefinite future all will round and fashion itself to his desires.
It is very slowly that a man awakens from the illusions of his first love.

It is very unwillingly that he ever comes to the final conclusion that he has made _there_ the mistake of a whole lifetime, and that the woman to whom he gave his whole heart not only is not the woman that he supposed her to be, but never in any future time, nor by any change of circumstances, will become that woman; for then the difficulty seems radical and final and hopeless.
In "The Pilgrim's Progress," we read that the poor man, Christian, tried to persuade his wife to go with him on the pilgrimage to the celestial city; but that finally he had to make up his mind to go alone without her.

Such is the lot of the man who is brought to the conclusion, positively and definitely, that his wife is always to be a hinderance, and never a help to him, in any upward aspiration; that whatever he does that is needful and right and true must be done, not by her influence, but in spite of it; that, if he has to swim against the hard, upward current of the river of life, he must do so with her hanging on his arm, and holding him back, and that he cannot influence and cannot control her.
Such hours of disclosure to a man are among the terrible hidden tragedies of life,--tragedies such as are never acted on the stage.
Such a time of disclosure came to John the year after Grace's marriage; and it came in this way:-- The Spindlewood property had long been critically situated.

Sundry financial changes which were going, on in the country had depreciated its profits, and affected it unfavorably.

All now depended upon the permanency of one commercial house.