And when I implored him myself
to help her, he did his work perfunctorily.
While we were less rich my husband disliked sharp practice in money
matters. He was scrupulously honourable in such things. But since he
had got a large account at the bank he was often closeted for hours with
some scamp of a landlord's agent, for purposes which clearly boded no
good.
Where has he drifted? What has become of this husband of mine, --the
husband I knew before I was blind; the husband who kissed me that day
between my brows, and enshrined me on the throne of a Goddess? Those
whom a sudden gust of passion brings down to the dust can rise up
again with a new strong impulse of goodness. But those who, day by day,
become dried up in the very fibre of their moral being; those who by
some outer parasitic growth choke the inner life by slow degrees,--such
wench one day a deadness which knows no healing.
The separation caused by blindness is the merest physical trifle. But,
ah! it suffocates me to find that he is no longer with me, where he
stood with me in that hour when we both knew that I was blind.
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