ere sick or disabled to-morrow, I know
how sorry she would be, and how deeply grieved myself, to think how we
had lost each other. But exactly the same incompatibility would arise,
the moment I was well again; and nothing on earth could make her
understand me, or suit us to each other. Her temperament will not go
with mine. It mattered not so much when we had only ourselves to
consider, but reasons have been growing since which make it all but
hopeless that we should even try to struggle on. What is now befalling
me I have seen steadily coming, ever since the days you remember when
Mary was born; and I know too well that you cannot, and no one can, help
me. Why I have even written I hardly know; but it is a miserable sort of
comfort that you should be clearly aware how matters stand. The mere
mention of the fact, without any complaint or blame of any sort, is a
relief to my present state of spirits--and I can get this only from you,
because I can speak of it to no one else." In the same tone was his
rejoinder to my reply. "To the most part of what you say--Amen! You are
not so tolerant as perhaps you might be of the wayward and unsettled
feeling which is part (I suppose) of the tenure on which one holds an
imaginative life, and which I have, as you ought to know well, often
only kept down by riding over it like a dragoon--but let that go by. I
make no maudlin complaint. I agree with you as to the very possible
incidents, even not less bearable than mine, that might and must often
occur to the married condition when it is entered into very young. I am
always deeply sensible of the wonderful exercise I have of life and its
highest sensations, and have said to myself for years, and have honestly
and truly felt, This is the drawback to such a career, and is not to be
complained of. I say it and feel it now as strongly as ever I did; and,
as I told you in my last, I do not with that view put all this forward.
But the years have not made it easier to bear for either of us; and, for
her sake as well as mine, the wish will force itself upon me that
something might be done. I know too well it is impossible. There is the
fact, and that is all one can say. Nor are you to suppose that I
disguise from myself what might be urged on the other side. I claim no
immunity from blame. There is plenty of fault on my side, I dare say, in
the way of a thousand uncertainties, caprices, and difficulties of
disposition; but only one thing will alt