new book therein. A floating idea of going up above the snow-line,
and living in some astonishing convent, hovers over me.

What do these cryptic utterances mean? At first, both in his novel
and in his letters, they are obscure; but before long, in each,
they become very definite. In 1856, we find these sentences among
his letters:

The old days--the old days! Shall I ever, I wonder, get the frame
of mind back as it used to be then? Something of it, perhaps, but
never quite as it used to be.

I find that the skeleton in my domestic closet is becoming a
pretty big one.

His next letter draws the veil and shows plainly what he means:

Poor Catherine and I are not made for each other, and there is no
help for it. It is not only that she makes me uneasy and unhappy,
but that I make her so, too--and much more so. We are strangely
ill-assorted for the bond that exists between us.

Then he goes on to say that she would have been a thousand times
happier if she had been married to another man. He speaks of
"incompatibility," and a "difference of temperaments." In fact, it
is the same old story with which we have become so familiar, and
which is both as old as the hills and as new as this morning's
newspaper.

Naturally, also, things grow worse, rather than better. Dickens