think themselves
handsome; and the most false and vicious of all are such as have
been reared in public-houses, the toast of drunken sots."

"Why, then, did you take me?"

"Because I was a fool. Every man commits a folly once in his life.
Even Solomon, the wisest of men, committed that folly; aye, and
many a time, too, for of wives he had plenty. But then he was a
king, and folly such as that mattered not to him. He could cut
off the head of, or shoot down any man who even looked at or spoke
a word to any of his wives. And if one of these were untrue to him,
he would put her in a sack and sink her in the Dead Sea, and--served
her right. To think that I--that I--the shrewd Broom-Squire, should
have been so bewitched and bedeviled as to be led into the bog of
marriage! Now I suffer for it." He turned savagely on his wife, and
said: "Have you forgotten that you vowed fidelity to me?"

"And you did you not swear to show me love?"

He broke into a harsh laugh.

"Love! That is purely! And just now, when I attempted to snatch a
kiss, you struck me and thrust me off, because I was Jonas Kink,
and not the lover you looked for?"

"Jonas!" said Mehetabel, and a flame of indignation started into
her cheek, and burnt there on each cheek-bone. "Jonas, you are
unjust. I swore to love you, and Heaven can answer for me that I
have striven hard to force the love to come where it does not exist
naturally. Can you sink a well in the sand-hill, and compel the
water to bubble up? Can you drain away the moor and bid it blossom
like a garden? I cannot love you--when you do everything to make me
shrink from you. You esteem nothing, no one, that is good. You
sneer at everything that is holy; you disbelieve in everything that
is honest; you value not the true, and you have no respect for
suffering. I do not deny that I have no love for you--that there is
much in you that makes me draw away--as from something hideous.
Why do not you try on your part to seek my love? Instead of that,
you take an ingenious pleasure in stamping out every spark of
affection, in driving away every atom of regard, that I am trying
so hard to acquire for you. Is all the strivin' to be on my
side?--all the thought and care to be with me? A very little pains
on your part, some small self-control, and we should get to find
common ground on which we could meet and be happy. As to Iver
Verstage, both he and I know well enough that we can never belong
to each other."