on with a woman you detest,
being utterly indifferent to me. I have married you because I cannot bring
myself to go back to that old teaching-life, now so cold and gray. I think
I can earn my board in taking care of your belongings, and the having
saved you from a dreadful fate must compensate to you for the little of my
presence you will for the future be compelled to endure. It need not be
much or long continued if we start with a fair comprehension of each
other.

This brings me to the reason of all this long history. I have always
looked upon marriage without love as nothing more or less than legalized
vice. I think you, who are so intrinsically a man of the world, will have
imbibed the (so-called) sensible and popular views upon such subjects, and
will at once coincide with me that in such a union as ours--a literal
_mariage de convenance_ on both sides--my ideas are not unwise. Since upon
you will henceforth depend my maintenance (as I of course understand that
a wife who worked for her own support would be a disgrace to you: indeed,
I doubt whether the having married a girl who has already done so is not a
cause of shame), I ask that now, when Mrs. Keller is about to leave me,
and my arrangements as your wife must be finally made--when, in fact, her
giving up her room necessitates my coming to yours, her leaving compelling
me either to go with her, or come, as of course I must, to you--we may
have a definite understanding as to our future relations.

You have been kind enough to approve of the little I have been able to do
for you since our marriage--to say to Mrs. Keller you did not know what it
was to be taken care of in sickness; and to myself you have more than once
laughingly spoken of a wife as a good institution, adding, that had you
known how comfortable it was to have some one about you to think of and
care for you, you would have invested in the article before; and so on. I
am glad of this: I am pleased that my society has not proved repugnant to
you; for since it has been no annoyance in its first trial, I think we can
manage that it shall not be so in the future. I would ask, as an especial
piece of mercy to "your handmaiden," that you will grant her some favors
at the outset of our somewhat tangled fate. Please let me be your sister.
It is for your well-being the world should know me as your wife, and, the
Lord helping me, I will be a willing, faithful helpmeet to you, caring
most for your comfort an