He, on the other hand, being still sincere,
tries my patience terribly with his jealousies and importunities. As he
has nothing to do, he is almost always with me; and a man who has no
office to go to--I dont care who he is--is a trial of which you can have
no conception. So much for our present relations. But I fear--indeed I
know--that they will not last long. I dare not look steadily at the
future. In spite of all that he has sacrificed for me, I cannot live
forever with him. There are times at which he inspires me with such a
frenzy of aversion and disgust that I have to put the strongest
constraint upon myself to avoid betraying my feelings to him. We
intended going to the West Indies direct from here, in search of some
idyllic retreat where we could live alone together. He still entertains
this project; but as I have totally abandoned it I put him off with some
pretext for remaining here whenever he mentions it. I have only one hope
of gaining a separation without being open to the reproach of having
deserted him. You remember how we disputed that Saturday about the
merits of a grand passion, which I so foolishly longed for. Well, I have
tried it, and proved it to be a lamentable delusion, selfish,
obstinate, blind, intemperate, and transient. As it has evaporated from
me, so it will evaporate from Sholto in the course of time. It would
have done so already, but that his love was more genuine than mine. When
the time comes, he will get rid of me without the least remorse; and so
he will have no excuse for reviving his old complaints of my treachery.

"One new and very disagreeable feature in my existence, which I had
partly prepared myself for, is the fear of detection. We sailed before
our flight had become public; and as there was fortunately no one on
board who knew us, I had a nine days' respite, and could fearlessly
approach the other women, who, I suppose, would not have spoken to me
had they known the truth. But here it is different. Ned's patents are so
much more extensively worked here than in England, and the people are so
go-ahead, that they take a great interest in him, and are proud of him
as an American. The news got into the papers a few days after we
arrived. To appreciate the full significance of this, you should know
what American newspapers are. One of them actually printed a long
account of my going away, with every paragraph headed in large print,
'Domestic Unhappiness,' 'The Serpent in the La