rmination, then and
there, to separate forever from the man who could never be more than
my nominal husband. I told them I held marriage, next to the Lord's
Supper, the holiest sacrament instituted by God, but mine had been an
infamous mockery, an unpardonable sin against me, and an insult to
Heaven, whose blessing could never rest upon it. Marriage, without
sanctifying love, was unhallowed, was a transgression of divine law,
and a crime against my womanhood which neither God nor man should
forgive. Maurice Carlyle had perjured himself,--had never loved the
woman who went with him to the altar,--and the affection that had
stirred my heart one hour before, was now as dead as the Pharaohs
hidden for centuries under the pyramids. We two, who had sworn to
love, honor, and cherish one another, now hated and despised each
other beyond all possibility of expression; and I considered it a
heinous sin to perpetuate the awful mockery, to cling to the letter of
a contract that bade defiance to every impulse of heart and soul,--to
every dictate of reason and decree of conscience. Wedded lives and
divided hearts I believed a crime, and while I admitted that man could
not put asunder those whom God's statutes joined together, I contended
that Mr. Carlyle's perjury rendered it sinful for him and me to reside
under the same roof. I could not recognize the validity of divorces,
for human hands could not unlink God's fetters, and man's law had no
power to free either of us from the bonds we had voluntarily assumed
in the invoked presence of Jehovah. I would neither accept nor permit
a divorce, for, in my estimation, it was not worth the paper that
framed it, and was a species of sacrilegious trifling; but I would
never live as the wife of a man who had repeatedly declared he had not
an atom of affection for me. _Under some circumstances I deemed
separation a woman's duty_, and while I fully comprehended the awful
import of the vow '_Till death us do part_,' and denied that human
legislators could free us, or annul the marriage, I was resolved,
while life lasted, to consider myself a duped, an unloved, but a
lawful wife,--a woman consecrated by solemn oaths that no human action
could cancel. Since money was the bait, I was willing to divide my
fortune as the price of a quiet separation; and though from that hour
I intended to quit his presence forever, and regard the tie that
linked us as merely nominal, I would allow him a liberal income