Never let the outside public know the details of your private life. Receive your friends and your guests with a smile on your lips. If your husband is a gentleman, he will show you before them the greatest consideration, and if you are a lady you will treat him in a like manner.
If your husband is unable to offer you his love—I mean a lover's love—do not commit the mistake of refusing his friendship, for it is just possible that this man, who has not in him the power to love you as a lover, would still be ready to give his life for you.
He would certainly be still ready to give it for his children, your children. Surely that friendship is worth having. Of course, the young wife, who discovers after only a few years of marriage that the dream of love has vanished, is to be pitied, supposing that it has not been through her fault that the dream has had such a short life; but the woman who for twenty or more years has had a faithful lover-husband is conceited and ridiculous beyond measure when she does not almost cheerfully resign herself to the inevitable crisis in matrimony; and if she has children that she takes in her confidence, and thus estranges from their father, her vanity is not very far from criminal. At all events, she deserves the sympathy of no one.
Resign yourself to the inevitable. Let the days of love, happiness, and devotion count in the final reckoning, and, in turning over a new leaf, be sure you bring forward devotion, and soon happiness may have to be added again.
Put on a cheerful face always, and remember that it pays to excite envy, never to excite pity.
CHAPTER XI
TIT FOR TAT
There is more joy in heaven, we are told, for one sinner who repents than for a hundred righteous people who keep straight on the narrow ways of salvation.