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plunge, to make me useful to my fellows—a man, and not
a drunkard.’ Whispering these conclusions to myself, I am
urged to brave public opinion, and make two lives happy.
I say to myself, or rather my desires say to me—‘What sin
is there in this? Adultery? No; for a marriage without love
is the coarsest of all adulteries. What tie binds a man and
woman together—that formula of license pronounced by
the priest, which the law has recognized as a ‘legal bond’?
Surely not this only, for marriage is but a partnership—a
contract of mutual fidelity—and in all contracts the viola-
tion of the terms of the agreement by one of the contracting
persons absolves the other. Mrs. Frere is then absolved, by
her husband’s act. I cannot but think so. But is she willing
to risk the shame of divorce or legal offence? Perhaps. Is she
fitted by temperament to bear such a burden of contumely
as must needs fall upon her? Will she not feel disgust at the
man who entrapped her into shame? Do not the comforts
which surround her compensate for the lack of affections?’
And so the torturing catechism continues, until I am driven
mad with doubt, love, and despair.
Of course I am wrong; of course I outrage my character
as a priest; of course I endanger—according to the creed I
teach—my soul and hers. But priests, unluckily, have hearts
and passions as well as other men. Thank God, as yet, I have
never expressed my madness in words. What a fate is mine!
When I am in her presence I am in torment; when I am
absent from her my imagination pictures her surrounded
by a thousand graces that are not hers, but belong to all
the women of my dreams—to Helen, to Juliet, to Rosalind.

For the Term of His Natural Life