, that it was her deep and tender love for her husband that
made her suffer so. "But it is killing me, it is killing me," she said,
and one who saw her could well believe it. And if the distress and the
great strain upon her nerves had kept on it certainly would have made
her ill, if not have actually ended her life with a nervous collapse.

The friend in whom she confided sat quietly and heard her through. She
let her pour herself out to the very finish until she stopped because
there was nothing more to say. Then, by means of a series of gentle,
well-adapted questions, she drew from the wife a recognition--for the
first time--of the fact that she really did nothing whatever for her
husband and expected him to do everything for her. Perhaps she put on a
pretty dress for him in order to look attractive when he came home, but
if he did not notice how well she looked, and was irritable about
something in the house, she would be dissolved in tears because she had
not proved attractive and pleased him. Maybe she had tried to have a
dinner that he especially liked; then if he did not notice the food,
and seemed distracted about something that was worrying him, she would
again be dissolved in tears because he "appreciated nothing that she
tried to do for him."

Now it is perfectly true that this husband was irritable and brutal; he
had no more consideration for his wife than he had for any one else.
But his wife was doing all in her power to fan his irritability into
flame and to increase his brutality. She was attitudinizing in her own
mind as a martyr. She was demanding kindness and attention and sympathy
from her husband, and because she demanded it she never got it.

A woman can demand without demanding imperiously. There is more selfish
demanding in a woman's emotional suffering because her husband does not
do this or that or the other for her sake than there is in a tornado of
man's irritability or anger. You see, a woman's demanding spirit is
covered with the mush of her emotions. A man's demanding spirit stands
out in all its naked ugliness. One is just as bad as the other. One is
just as repulsive as the other.

It is a radical, practical impossibility to bring loving-kindness out
of any one by demanding it. Loving-kindness, thoughtfulness, and
consideration have got to be born spontaneously in a man's own mind to
be anything at all, and no amount of demanding on the part of his wife
can force it.

When this lit