There was just the chance—a remote one—that you might have met the kind of husband to suit you: an eminently masculine type, the kind who would have kept the whip-hand over you, and regarded a wife as half-mistress, half-slave. Even then I think your conjugal happiness would have ceased the first day he lost the attraction of novelty.
Professor Wellmann, your quiet, correct husband, was as great a torment to you as you were to him. Without intending it, you made his life a misery. The dreadful scenes which were brought about by your violent and sensual temperament so changed his disposition that he became brutal; while to you they became a kind of second nature, a necessity, like food or sleep.
Magna, you will think me brutal, too, because I now tell you in black and white what formerly I lacked the courage to say. Believe me, it was often on the tip of my tongue to exclaim: "Better have a lover than torment this poor man whose temperament is so different to your own."
I will not say you did not care for your husband. You learnt to see his good qualities; but there was no true union between you. You hated his work. Not like a woman who is jealous of the time spent away from her; but because you believed such arduous brain work made him less ardent as a lover. Although you did not really care for him, you would have sacrificed all his fame and reputation for an hour of unreasoning passion.
At his death you lost the breadwinner and the position you had gained in the world as the wife of a celebrity. Your grief was sincere; you felt your loneliness and loss. Then for the first time you clung to your children, and erroneously believed you were moved by maternal feeling. You honestly intended henceforward to live for them alone.
All went well for three months, and then the struggle began. Do you know, Magna, I admired the way you fought. You would not give way an inch. You wore the deepest weeds. Sheltered behind your crape, you surrounded yourself by your children, and fought for your life.
This inward conflict added to your attractions. It gave you an air of nobility you had hitherto lacked.
Then the world began to whisper evil about you while you were still quite irreproachable.
No, after all there was something to reproach you with, although it was not known to outsiders. While you were fighting your instincts and trying to live as a spotless widow, your character was undergoing a change: against your will, but not unconsciously, you were become a perfect fury. In this way your children acquired that timidity which they have never quite outgrown. Strangers began to notice this after a while, and to criticise your behaviour.
Time went on. You wrote that you were obliged to do a "cure" in a nursing home for nervous complaints. When I heard this, I could not repress a smile, in spite of your misfortunes. Nerve specialists may be very clever, but can they be expected, even at the highest fees, to replace defunct husbands. You were kept in bed and dosed with bromides and sulphonal. After a few weeks you were pronounced quite well, and left the home a little stouter and rather languid after keeping your bed so long.