And this was the
man she had loved and for whom she had wrecked her young life! Or WAS
it love? and, if NOT, how was she better than he? Worse; for he was
more loyal to that passion that had brought them together and its
responsibilities than she was. She had suffered the perils and pangs of
maternity, and yet had only the mere animal yearning for her offspring,
while he had taken over the toil and duty, and even the devotion, of
parentage himself. But then she remembered also how he had fascinated
her--a simple schoolgirl--by his sheer domineering strength, and how the
objections of her parents to this coarse and common man had forced her
into a clandestine intimacy that ended in her complete subjection to
him. She remembered the birth of an infant whose concealment from her
parents and friends was compassed by his low cunning; she remembered the
late atonement of marriage preferred by the man she had already begun
to loathe and fear, and who she now believed was eager only for her
inheritance. She remembered her abject compliance through the greater
fear of the world, the stormy scenes that followed their ill-omened
union, her final abandonment of her husband, and the efforts of her
friends and family who had rescued the last of her property from him.
She was glad she remembered it; she dwelt upon it, upon his cruelty, his
coarseness and vulgarity, until she saw, as she honestly believed, the
hidden springs of his affection for their child.
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