orce and remarriage does
or does not tend to destroy a portion of that fabric. Nancy certainly
would have been justified in divorce. It did not seem in the retrospect
that I would have been: surely not if, after I had married Nancy, I had
developed this view of life that seemed to me to be the true view. I
should have been powerless to act upon it. But the chances were I should
not have developed it, since it would seem that any salvation for me at
least must come precisely through suffering, through not getting what I
wanted. Was this equivocating?

My mistake had been in marrying Maude instead of Nancy--a mistake largely
due to my saturation with a false idea of life. Would not the attempt to
cut loose from the consequences of that mistake in my individual case
have been futile? But there was a remedy for it--the remedy Krebs had
suggested: I might still prevent my children from making such a mistake,
I might help to create in them what I might have been, and thus find a
solution for myself. My errors would then assume a value.

But the question tortured me: would Maude wish it? Would it be fair to
her if she did not? By my long neglect I had forfeited the right to go.
And would she agree with my point of view if she did permit me to stay? I
had less concern on this score, a feeling that that development of hers,
which once had irritated me, was in the same direction as my own....

I have still strangely to record moments when, in spite of the
aspirations I had achieved, of the redeeming vision I had gained, at the
thought of returning to her I revolted. At such times recollections came
into my mind of those characteristics in her that had seemed most
responsible for my alienation.... That demon I had fed so mightily still
lived. By what right--he seemed to ask--had I nourished him all these
years if now I meant to starve him? Thus sometimes he defied me, took on
Protean guises, blustered, insinuated, cajoled, managed to make me
believe that to starve him would be to starve myself, to sap all there
was of power in me. Let me try and see if I could do it! Again he
whispered, to what purpose had I gained my liberty, if now I renounced
it? I could not live in fetters, even though the fetters should be
self-imposed. I was lonely now, but I would get over that, and life lay
before me still.

Fierce and tenacious, steel in the cruelty of his desires, fearful in the
havoc he had wrought, could he be subdued? Foiled, he to