Why can't you women love us, faults and all? Why do you place us on
monstrous pedestals? We have all feet of clay, women as well as men; but
when we men love women, we love them knowing their weaknesses, their
follies, their imperfections, love them all the more, it may be, for that
reason. It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love.
It is when we are wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others,
that love should come to cure us--else what use is love at all? All
sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save
loveless lives, true Love should pardon. A man's love is like that. It
is wider, larger, more human than a woman's. Women think that they are
making ideals of men. What they are making of us are false idols merely.
You made your false idol of me, and I had not the courage to come down,
show you my wounds, tell you my weaknesses. I was afraid that I might
lose your love, as I have lost it now. And so, last night you ruined my
life for me--yes, ruined it! What this woman asked of me was nothing
compared to what she offered to me. She offered security, peace,
stability. The sin of my youth, that I had thought was buried, rose up
in front of me, hideous, horrible, with its hands at my throat. I could
have killed it for ever, sent it back into its tomb, destroyed its
record, burned the one witness against me. You prevented me. No one but
you, you know it. And now what is there before me but public disgrace,
ruin, terrible shame, the mockery of the world, a lonely dishonoured
life, a lonely dishonoured death, it may be, some day? Let women make no
more ideals of men! let them not put them on alters and bow before them,
or they may ruin other lives as completely as you--you whom I have so
wildly loved--have ruined mine!--_An Ideal Husband_.