“These were vile discoveries; but except for the treachery of concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife, even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger —­ when I found that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort; that kindly conversation could not be sustained between us, because whatever topic I started, immediately received from her a turn at once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile —­ when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled household, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, exacting orders —­ even then I restrained myself:  I eschewed upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance; I tried to devour my repentance and disgust in secret; I repressed the deep antipathy I felt.

“Jane, I will not trouble you with abominable details:  some strong words shall express what I have to say.  I lived with that woman upstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed:  her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices sprang up fast and rank:  they were so strong, only cruelty could check them, and I would not use cruelty.  What a pigmy intellect she had, and what giant propensities!  How fearful were the curses those propensities entailed on me!  Bertha Mason, the true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste.

“My brother in the interval was dead, and at the end of the four years my father died too.  I was rich enough now —­ yet poor to hideous indigence:  a nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever saw, was associated with mine, and called by the law and by society a part of me.  And I could not rid myself of it by any legal proceedings:  for the doctors now discovered that my wife was mad —­ her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity.  Jane, you don’t like my narrative; you look almost sick —­ shall I defer the rest to another day?”

“No, sir, finish it now; I pity you —­ I do earnestly pity you.”

“Pity, Jane, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them.  But that is not your pity, Jane; it is not the feeling of which your whole face is full at this moment —­ with which your eyes are now almost overflowing —­ with which your heart is heaving —­ with which your hand is trembling in mine.  Your pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of love:  its anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion.  I accept it, Jane; let the daughter have free advent —­ my arms wait to receive her.”