row dust in my eyes, while
at the same time you are betraying all that you are most anxious to
conceal. Judging from your letter, the maternal feeling is deeply
ingrained in your nature. You are prepared to fight for your children
and sacrifice yourself for them if necessary. You would put yourself
aside in order to secure for them a healthy and comfortable existence.

The real truth is that your conscience is pricking you with a remorse
that has been instigated by others. Maternal sentiment is not your
strong point; far from it. In your husband's lifetime you did not try to
make two and two amount to five; and you often showed very plainly that
your children were rather an encumbrance than otherwise. When at last
your affection for them grew, it was not because they were your own
flesh and blood, but because you were thrown into daily contact with
these little creatures whom you had to care for.

Now you have lost your head because the outlook is rather bad. Your
family, or rather your late husband's people, have attempted to coerce
you in a way that I consider entirely unjustifiable. And you have
allowed yourself to be bullied, and therefore, all unconsciously, have
given them some hold over your life and actions.

You must not forget that your husband's family, without being asked,
have been allowing you a yearly income which permitted you to live in
the same style as before Professor Wellmann's death. They placed no
restrictions upon you, and made no conditions. Now, the family--annoyed
by what reaches their ears--want to insist that you should conform to
their wishes; otherwise they will withdraw the money, or take from you
the custody of the children. This is a very arbitrary proceeding.

Reflect well what they are asking of you before you let yourself be
bound hand and foot.

Are you really capable, Magna, of being an absolutely irreproachable
widow?

Perhaps there ought to be a law by which penniless widows with children
to bring up should be incarcerated in some kind of nunnery, or burnt
alive at the obsequies of their husbands. But failing such a law, I do
not think a grown-up woman is obliged to promise that she will
henceforth take a vow of chastity. One must not give a promise only to
break it, and, my dear Magna, I do not think you are the woman to keep a
vow of that kind.

For this reason you ought never to have made yourself dependent upon
strangers by accepting their money for the education of y