I could have died of confusion and the utter degradation of shame. To think that my poor efforts to please him, my vain attempts to look up to him and reverence him, my bankrupt appeals to the spiritual woman in me that I might bring myself to love him, as I thought it was my duty to do, should have been perverted by his gross and vulgar mind into overtures to the animal man in him—this was more than I could bear. I felt the tears gushing to my eyes, but I kept them back, for my self-pity was not so strong as my wrath.
I rose this time without being aware of his resistance.
"Let me go to bed," I said.
"Certainly! Most certainly, my dear, but. . . ."
"Let me go to bed," I said again, and at the next moment I stepped into my room.
He did not attempt to follow me. I saw in a mirror in front what was taking place behind me.
My husband was standing where I had left him with a look first of amazement and then of rage.
"I can't understand you," he said. "Upon my soul I can't! There isn't a man in the world who could." After that he strode into his own bedroom and clashed the door after him.
"Oh, what's the good?" I thought again.
It was impossible to make myself in love with my husband. It was no use trying.