She
deserves all the censure she gets, and more--but, oh! she does deserve a
little pity with it! When this girl had been married nearly a year, she
heard her husband coming upstairs one night long after midnight, in a
condition she had learned to recognize--and fear. She locked her bedroom
door. When he discovered that, he was furiously angry; as I said before,
he was a big man, and he was very strong. He knocked out a panel, put his
hand through, and turned the key. When he reached her, he reminded her
that she had been perfectly willing to marry him--that she was his wife,
his property, anything you choose to call it; he struck her. The next
day she was very ill, and the child which should have been born three
months later came--and went--before evening. The next year she was not so
fortunate; her second baby was born at the right time--her husband was
away with another woman when it happened--a horrible, diseased little
creature with staring, sightless eyes. Thank God! it lived only two
weeks, and its mother, after a long period of suffering and agony during
which she felt like a leper, recovered again, in time to see her husband
die--after three nights, during which she got no sleep--of delirium
tremens, leaving her with over two million dollars to spend as she
chose--and the degradation of her body and the ruin of her soul to think
of all the rest of her life!"
"Sylvia!"--the cry with which Austin broke his long silence came from the
innermost depths of his being--"Sylvia, Sylvia, you shan't say such
things--they're not true.
Pages:
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74