"Because I was a fool. Every man commits a folly once in his life. Even Solomon, the wisest of men, committed that folly; aye, and many a time, too, for of wives he had plenty. But then he was a king, and folly such as that mattered not to him. He could cut off the head of, or shoot down any man who even looked at or spoke a word to any of his wives. And if one of these were untrue to him, he would put her in a sack and sink her in the Dead Sea, and—served her right. To think that I—that I—the shrewd Broom-Squire, should have been so bewitched and bedeviled as to be led into the bog of marriage! Now I suffer for it." He turned savagely on his wife, and said: "Have you forgotten that you vowed fidelity to me?"
"And you did you not swear to show me love?"
He broke into a harsh laugh.
"Love! That is purely! And just now, when I attempted to snatch a kiss, you struck me and thrust me off, because I was Jonas Kink, and not the lover you looked for?"
"Jonas!" said Mehetabel, and a flame of indignation started into her cheek, and burnt there on each cheek-bone. "Jonas, you are unjust. I swore to love you, and Heaven can answer for me that I have striven hard to force the love to come where it does not exist naturally. Can you sink a well in the sand-hill, and compel the water to bubble up? Can you drain away the moor and bid it blossom like a garden? I cannot love you—when you do everything to make me shrink from you. You esteem nothing, no one, that is good. You sneer at everything that is holy; you disbelieve in everything that is honest; you value not the true, and you have no respect for suffering. I do not deny that I have no love for you—that there is much in you that makes me draw away—as from something hideous. Why do not you try on your part to seek my love? Instead of that, you take an ingenious pleasure in stamping out every spark of affection, in driving away every atom of regard, that I am trying so hard to acquire for you. Is all the strivin' to be on my side?—all the thought and care to be with me? A very little pains on your part, some small self-control, and we should get to find common ground on which we could meet and be happy. As to Iver Verstage, both he and I know well enough that we can never belong to each other."
"Oh, I stand between you?"
"Yes you and my duty."
"Much you value either."
"I know my duty and will do it. Iver Verstage and I can never belong to each other. We know it, and we have parted forever. I have not desired to be untrue to you in heart; but I did not know what was possible and what impossible in this poor, unhappy heart of mine when I promised to love you. I did not know what love meant at the time. Mother told me it grew as a matter of course in married life, like chickweed in a garden."
"Am I gone crazed, or have you?" exclaimed Bideabout, snorting with passion. "You have parted with Iver quite so but only till after my death, which you will compass between you. I know that well enough. It was because I knew that, that I would not suffer you to give me doses of laudanum. A couple of drops, where one would suffice, and this obstruction to your loves was removed."