t; no social cancer so venomous but she will shrink
from cutting it out, and plead that it is a comfortable thing, and much
better as it is. She knows that she disobeyed her father, and that he
deserved to be disobeyed; yet she condemns other women who are
disobedient, and stands out against Nelly McQuinch in defence of the
unselfishness of parental love. She knows that the increased freedom of
movement allowed to her as a married woman has been healthy for her; yet
she looks coldly at other young women who assert their right to freedom,
and are not afraid to walk through the streets without a sheepdog, human
or otherwise, at their heels. She knows that marriage is not what she
expected it to be, and that it gives me many unfair advantages over her;
and she knows also that ours is a happier marriage than most.
Nevertheless she will encourage other girls to marry; she will maintain
that the chain which galls her own wrists so often is a string of
honeysuckles; and if a woman identifies herself with any public movement
for the lightening of that chain, she wont allow that that woman is fit
to be admitted into decent society. There is not one of these shams to
which she clings that I would not like to take by the throat and shake
the life out of; and she knows it. Even in that she has not the
consistency to believe me wrong, because it is undutiful and out of
keeping with the honeysuckles to lack faith in her husband. In order to
blind herself to her inconsistencies, she has to live in a rose-colored
fog; and what with me constantly, in spite of myself, blowing this fog
away on the one side, and the naked facts of her everyday experience as
constantly letting in the daylight on the other, she must spend half
the time wondering whether she is mad or sane. Between her desire to do
right and her discoveries that it generally leads her to do wrong, she
passes her life in a wistful melancholy which I cant dispel. I can only
pity her. I suppose I could pet her; but I hate treating a woman like a
child: it means giving up all hope of her becoming rational. She may
turn for relief any day either to love or religion; and for her own sake
I hope she will choose the first. Of the two evils, it is the least
permanent." And Conolly, having disburdened himself, resumed his work
without any pretence of waiting for the clergyman's comments.

"Well," said the Rev. George, cautiously, "I do not think I have quite
followed your opinions, whic