f the social fabric; in other words, whether the gratification
of any particular love by divorce and remarriage does or does not tend
to destroy a portion of that fabric. Nancy certainly would have been
justified in divorce. It did not seem in the retrospect that I would
have been: surely not if, after I had married Nancy, I had developed
this view of life that seemed to me to be the true view. I should have
been powerless to act upon it. But the chances were I should not have
developed it, since it would seem that any salvation for me at least
must come precisely through suffering, through not getting what I
wanted. Was this equivocating?

My mistake had been in marrying Maude instead of Nancy--a mistake
largely due to my saturation with a false idea of life. Would not
the attempt to cut loose from the consequences of that mistake in my
individual case have been futile? But there was a remedy for it--the
remedy Krebs had suggested: I might still prevent my children from
making such a mistake, I might help to create in them what I might have
been, and thus find a solution for myself. My errors would then assume a
value.

But the question tortured me: would Maude wish it? Would it be fair to
her if she did not? By my long neglect I had forfeited the right to go.
And would she agree with my point of view if she did permit me to stay?
I had less concern on this score, a feeling that that development of
hers, which once had irritated me, was in the same direction as my
own....

I have still strangely to record moments when, in spite of the
aspirations I had achieved, of the redeeming vision I had gained, at the
thought of returning to her I revolted. At such times recollections
came into my mind of those characteristics in her that had seemed most
responsible for my alienation.... That demon I had fed so mightily still
lived. By what right--he seemed to ask--had I nourished him all these
years if now I meant to starve him? Thus sometimes he defied me, took
on Protean guises, blustered, insinuated, cajoled, managed to make me
believe that to starve him would be to starve myself, to sap all there
was of power in me. Let me try and see if I could do it! Again he
whispered, to what purpose had I gained my liberty, if now I renounced
it? I could not live in fetters, even though the fetters should be
self-imposed. I was lonely now, but I would get over that, and life lay
before me still.

Fierce and tenacious, steel in the c