My soul was clear from hypocrisy—there was not any lie upon it now. I had confessed all. My very life was laid open to my heart’s core. My love was gone, as well by his will as my own, forever.
What had I accomplished? I had preserved the chaste name of wife. I had preserved the honor of my husband and the reputation of his children. And to do it, I was beneath his roof, and was about to submit myself to his embraces without love.
For these considerations of honor and reputation, I was about to lead voluntarily a life of prostitution, distinguished from it only by the social fiction of a name, and I felt myself more degraded for all this honorable hire than she who accepts her paltry dole in the streets.
I was, moreover, about to fulfil functions from which every fibre of my body shrunk with abhorrence. I was there to give life to offspring created in my own degradation, in violation of my will and nature, the effete offspring of blood kin, children to die feebly before their time, or perhaps to come into the world, they, or their children, deformed, or dumb, or blind, or imbecile. I, who was perfect myself, and formed to receive and transmit the sacred treasure of a new life, was to become voluntarily the matricide of the more perfect conceptions which should be mine.
Better, in the agony of that thought, I said, better death than this—better self-immolation of body and soul; it were far less a crime.
And then, shuddering with horror upon the brink to which duty had led me, I supplicated my soul imploringly for light, as I asked myself the great question: Does any law of God sanction, shall any law of man have the power to continue, the bond of marriage where no love exists?
And I answered it, as my children, if they inherit aught of my nature, shall at last approve, as the world shall at last come to understand.
Thus was I at once and forever severed from all former relations and left alone in the world.
I write these last words quietly, here at my writing desk; but that inquisition of my brain, it was terrible—more terrible even than the death I had accepted in parting from him.
But my decision was made, and I was calm then.