Page 628 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

in the looking-glass a haggard face, with red eyes. I look
down upon shaking hands, flaccid muscles, and shrunken
limbs. I speculate if I shall ever be one of those grotesque
and melancholy beings, with bleared eyes and running nos-
es, swollen bellies and shrunken legs! Ugh!—it is too likely.
October 22nd.—Have spent the day with Mrs. Frere. She
is evidently eager to leave the place—as eager as I am. Frere
rejoices in his murderous power, and laughs at her expostu-
lations. I suppose men get tired of their wives. In my present
frame of mind I am at a loss to understand how a man could
refuse a wife anything.
I do not think she can possibly care for him. I am not
a selfish sentimentalist, as are the majority of seducers. I
would take no woman away from a husband for mere lik-
ing. Yet I think there are cases in which a man who loved
would be justified in making a woman happy at the risk of
his own—soul, I suppose.
Making her happy! Ay, that’s the point. Would she be
happy? There are few men who can endure to be ‘cut’, slight-
ed, pointed at, and women suffer more than men in these
regards. I, a grizzled man of forty, am not such an arrant
ass as to suppose that a year of guilty delirium can compen-
sate to a gently-nurtured woman for the loss of that social
dignity which constitutes her best happiness. I am not such
an idiot as to forget that there may come a time when the
woman I love may cease to love me, and having no tie of
self-respect, social position, or family duty, to bind her, may
inflict upon her seducer that agony which he has taught her
to inflict upon her husband. Apart from the question of the