each batch had
gone I got out and cautiously opened the window again, and then waited
for the next ones, slaying mosquitoes while I waited; and it was while I
lay there sleepless and tormented that the longing to help reunite
Charlotte and her husband first entered my head.

It is true that I was bothered for some time trying to arrive at a clear
comprehension of what constitutes selfishness, but I gave that up for it
only made my head ache. Surely Charlotte, for instance, was intensely
selfish to leave her home and, heedless of her husband's unhappiness,
live the life she preferred? But was not he equally selfish in wanting
to have her back again? For whose happiness would that be? He could not
suppose for hers. If she, determined to be unselfish, went home, she
would only be pandering to his selfishness. The more she destroyed her
individuality and laid its broken remains at his feet, the more she
would be developing evil qualities in the acceptor of such a gift. We
are taught that our duty is to make each other good and happy, not bad
and happy; Charlotte, therefore, would be doing wrong if, making the
Professor happy, she also made him bad. Because he had a sweet way with
him and she had not, he got all the sympathy, including mine; and of
course the whole of that windy mass of biassed superficiality called
Public Opinion was on his side. But how can one, if one truly loves a
woman, wish her to live a life that must make her wretched? Such love
can only be selfish; accordingly the Professor was selfish. They were
both selfish; and if one were not so the other would be more so. And if
to be unselfish meant making those about you the opposite, then it must
be wrong; and were it conceivable that a whole family should determine
to be unselfish and actually carry out the dreadful plan, life in that
doomed house would become a perpetual _combat de generosite_, not in any
way to be borne. Here it was that my head began to ache. 'What stuff is
this?' I thought, veering round suddenly to the easeful simplicity of
the old conventions. 'Just to think of it gives me a headache. The only
thing I know of that does not give a woman a headache is to live the
life for which she was intended--the comfortable life with a brain at
rest and a body wholly occupied with benevolences; and if her meekness
makes her husband bad, what does that matter in the end to any one but
him? Charlotte ought to be very happy with that kind old man. Any