A. was dressed in her best and we had an affectionate meeting.  After tea I asked her if she were married to E. She said “No.”  Then I said:  “Who are you married to?” She commenced to cry then, and told me something of her life, the saddest I ever heard.  When only 17 she had been courted by a young man she did not care for, but who prevailed on her parents by pretending he had seduced her, but wished to marry her.  Strange as it may seem, A. did not know what marriage meant, her mother being one of those silly women who don’t like talking of these things and let their daughters grow up in ignorance, expecting they will learn from some one.  In nine cases out of ten this happens, but A. was an exception.  It was this, and the fact that she had not a particle of love for her husband, that gave her such a hatred of coition.  When her mother saw the sheets the morning after the marriage she burst out crying; she did not like the young man and saw she had been deceived.

A.’s husband soon showed his true character; he was in reality a gaol-bird.  He beat her, drank, and even wanted her to go on the streets to earn money for him.  She left him and went home; it was then she began her theatrical career by entering the ballet.  At intervals her husband, drunk and desperate, would waylay and threaten her in the street.  One day after a rehearsal he attempted to stab her.  She got on in spite of all, being a born actress, and played small parts in traveling companies.  Then E., who had also gone on the stage, courted her and she listened to him, not because she cared for him, but he protected her and offered her a home.  She joined him; but his drunkenness and sensuality were so gross that he ruined his health and he attempted to maltreat A. in a nameless way.  And whenever she was in the family way he would leave her alone and half-conscious in the cellar for days.  To add to her misery she had epileptic fits.  Then sometimes they would be out of an engagement and starving.  They had been so hungry as to steal raw potatoes out of a sack and eat them thus, having no fire.  She would often have had engagements, but E. was jealous and would not let her act without him.  And he beat her as her husband had done, and her health became undermined.  It was just after one of the forced miscarriages that she joined our traveling company, and that accounted for her yellow and puffy appearance.  E. was now away up-country with a circus, but was expected down any time.  A. told me a good deal of all this, between her tears, while sitting at my feet, and her tone carried conviction.  When I ought to have gone home I persuaded her to let me stay all night.  We had been in bed some time when her mother knocked at the door and wanted to come in for something in a chest of drawers there.  “Why don’t you open the door, A.?  Who have you got there?  Hasn’t that fellow gone?” A. was confused and told me to get under the bed, but I refused, and she covered me up with the bed clothes as well