Yet at times I fancy that my brain is bursting bounds. What is there
more natural than that a married woman should have children? But to me
that natural order seems so monstrous that it well-nigh maddens me.
Yet a thing cannot be at the same time in the order of nature and
a monstrosity. No brain can withstand that. What does it mean? I
understand that those whom fate means to crush are crushed by some
great, overwhelming calamity. With me it is different. I am rent
asunder by an ordinary, natural event,--and the more natural, the more
terrible it is. One contradicts the other. She is not responsible,--I
understand that because I am not mad. She is still virtuous, and yet
I could have sooner forgiven her any other crime. And I cannot, God
knows I cannot forgive you, because I loved you so much. And believe
me, there is not another woman in the whole world I scorn so much as I
scorn you. For, after all, it comes to this: you had two lovers, one
for Platonic love and the other for matrimonial love. There is in me a
wild desire to laugh, and at the same time to dash my head against the
wall. I had not foreseen that a way could be found to tear me from
you; and yet there is one, and it has proved effective.