As a husband he was an anomaly like a caged macaw in a spinster's drawing-room.
Mrs.Thalassa's victory had ended with bringing him down, and she soon had cause to regret her temerity in marrying him.

Thalassa repaid the indignity of capture by a course of treatment which had long since subdued his wife to a state of perpetual fear of him--a fear which deepened into speechless shaking horror when he stormed out at her in one of his black rages.

Some women would have taken to drink, others to religion.

Mrs.
Thalassa sought consolation in two packs of diminutive and dog-eared cards.

Her shattered spirit found something inexpressibly soothing in the intricacies of patience: in the patchwork of colour, the array of sequences, the sudden discovery of an overlooked move, the dear triumph of a hard-won game.
It was thus she was occupied now, shuffling, cutting, and laying out her rows with quick nervous movements of her worn little hands.