"I am going to speak to mother. Shall I send you a cup?"
"No, thank you. Do not stop long, Robert."
She went to the window and looked out into the dreary night. A heavy rain was falling, and not a star was visible in that muffled atmosphere. Sorrowful feelings pervaded all her thoughts, and she asked her soul eagerly for some password out of the tangle of small trials, which like brambles made her path difficult and painful. For the circumstances in which she so suddenly found herself, confounded and troubled her. Had Robert deceived her? Had she been deceived in Robert?
It was, however, a consciousness of having fallen below herself, which hurt her worst of all. She had made concessions, where concession was wrong; she had made apologies for her husband, whereas he ought to have made them to her.
"I have been weak," she whispered to her Inner Woman, and that truthful monitor replied:
"To be weak is to be wicked."
"I have resigned my just rights and my just anger."
"And so have encouraged others to be unjust and unkind, and to sin against you."
"And I have gained nothing by my cowardly self-sacrifice."
"Nothing but humiliation and suffering, which you deserve."