" She began to see
that marriage was not merely the solution of a family trouble, and the
giving of her body as a hostage for a pecuniary debt, but that it was a
rendition of all her liberty, even the liberty of sympathy and of
sorrow, to the man to whom she must cleave.
In marrying him she had left friendship, father and mother, everything,
at a greater distance than she ever dreamed; and they resented the
desertion to the degree that they now confounded her with her new
interest, let go their claim upon her, and could scarce conceive of her
except in the dual relation of a woman subject to her husband, and
selfish as himself.
"I wonder if he will grow weary of me, too," she thought, with anguish,
"after his possession is established and I shall have no other source of
confidence? What did I know of this world only yesterday? Then every way
seemed clear and open for me, my friends abundant, and love profuse;
to-day I am in awful doubts, and yet I must not lose my will and drift
with every passing fear and confusion into the fickleness which makes
woman contemptible after she has given her hand. I will never give up
two persons--my father, and my husband!"
As she turned down the lamp, it being nearly midnight, a short, fierce
cry, quickly stifled, as if some wild animal had howled once in
nightmare and fallen asleep in his kennel again, seized on her ears and
chilled her blood.
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