The Wedding Bed: a novel

Because now he is troubled, and he does not much like to be troubled. Recumbent there in his cushions on the wedding bed, which is richly carved around the frame with birds and flowers and little processions of wise men in conical hats about God knows what business, and gilded, and lacquered, and put together without a nail lest the cold iron pierce marital harmony, he dreams troubling dreams. Or not dreams so much as one dream, always the same, advancing, day after day, night after night. The cast is quite familiar.