“I think that now.”
“Jan, life is strangely different and yet strangely alike. My experience has not been so very far apart from yours. I was induced to marry when only twenty-one a lady who is my inferior in rank, but who is a very rich woman. She is a few years older than I, but she is beautiful, full of generous impulses, and well known for her charitable deeds.”
“You are surely fortunate.”
“I am very unhappy.”
“Does she not love thee?”
“Alas! she loves me so much that she makes both her own and my life miserable.”
“That is what I do not understand.”
“Her love is a great love, but it is a selfish love. She is willing that I should be happy in her way, but in no other. I must give her not only my affection, but my will, my tastes, my duties to every other creature. My friends, horses, dogs, even this yacht, she regards as enemies; she is sure that every one of them takes the thought and attention she ought to have. And the hardest part is, that her noble side only is seen by the world. I alone suffer from the fault that spoils all. Consequently 178 the world pities her, and looks upon me very much as the people of Lerwick looked on you.”
“And can thou do nothing for thy own side?”
“Nothing. I am in the case of a very worthy old Roman lord who desired to divorce his wife. There was a great outcry. All his friends were amazed. ‘Is she not handsome, virtuous, rich, amiable?’ they asked. ‘What hath she done to thee?’ The Roman husband pointed to his sandal. ‘Is it not new, is it not handsome and well made? But none of you can tell where it pinches me.’ That old Roman and I are brothers. Every one praises ‘my good wife, my rich wife, my handsome wife,’ but for all that, the matrimonial shoe pinches me.”