is is
really all your fault. When you married me, five years ago, I was only
sixteen, and very much in love with you. Now, why didn't you make me
do the housework and drudge as all the other women on the farms about
yours did? I'd have done it then, and willingly, even to the washing
and scrubbing. I had been working in a cotton mill. I didn't know
anything better than to drudge. I thought that was a woman's lot. It
didn't even seem terrible to me. But no--you set yourself to amuse me.
You brought me way up to town on a wedding journey. For the first time
in my life I saw there idle women in the world, who wore soft clothes
and were always dressed up. You bought me finery. I was clever and
imitative. I pined for all the excitement and beauty of city life when
we were back on the farm, in the life you loved. I cried for it, as a
child cries for the moon. I never dreamed of getting it. And you
surprised me by selling the farm, and coming nearer the town to live.
Just because I had an ear for music, and could pick out tunes on the
old melodeon, I must have a piano and take lessons. Just because my
music teacher happened to be French and I showed an aptitude for
studying, that must be gratified. Can you really blame me if I want to
see more of the wide world that opened up to me? Did you really think
French novels and music were likely to make a woman of my lively
imagination content with her lot as wife of a mechanic--however
clever?"

The man looked down at her as if stunned. Arguments of that sort were
a bit above the reasoning of the simple masculine animal, who seemed
to belong to that race which comprehends little of the complex
emotions, and looks on love as the one inevitable passion of life, and
on marriage as its logical result and everlasting conclusion.

It was probable at this moment that he completed his alphabet in the
great lesson of life--and spelled out painfully the awful truth, that
not all the royal service of worship and love in a man's heart can
hold a woman.

There was something akin to a sob in his throat as he replied: "You
were so young--so pretty! I could not bear to think that you should
soil your hands for me! I wanted to make up to you for all the
hardships and sorrows of your childhood. I dreamed of being mother and
father as well as husband to you. I thought it would make you happy to
owe everything to me--as happy as it made me to give. I would
willingly have carried you every step of y