She compelled us to realise the things we scarcely dare foresee....

I shall never forget a letter in which she wrote these words in a queer, faltering handwriting: 

“If men suspected what took place in a woman’s inner life after forty, they would avoid us like the plague, or knock us on the head like mad dogs.”

Such a philosophy of life ended in the poor woman being shut up in a madhouse.  She ought to have kept it to herself instead of posting it up on the walls of her house.  It was quite sufficient as a proof of her insanity.

I cannot think what induced me to visit her in the asylum.  Not pure pity.  I was prompted rather by that kind of painful curiosity which makes a patient ask to see a limb which has just been amputated.  I wanted to look with my own eyes into that shadowy future which Agatha had reached before me.

What did I discover?  She had never cared for her husband; on the contrary she had betrayed him with an effrontery that would hardly have been tolerated outside the smart world; yet now she suffered the torments of hell from jealousy of her husband.  Not of her lovers; their day was over; but of him, because he was the one man she saw.  Also because she bore his name and was therefore bound to him.

On every other subject she was perfectly sane.  When we were left alone together she said:  “The worst of it is that I know my ‘madness’ will only be temporary.  It is a malady incident to my age.  One day it will pass away.  One day I shall have got through the inevitable phase.  But how does that help me now?”

No, it was no more help to her than the dreadful paint with which she plastered her haggard features.

It was not the least use to her....

Her death is the best thing that could have happened, for her own sake and for those belonging to her.  But I cannot take my thoughts off the hours which preceded her end; the time that passed between the moment when she decided to commit suicide until she actually carried out her resolve.

* * * * *

“If men suspected ...”

It may safely be said that on the whole surface of the globe not one man exists who really knows a woman.

They know us in the same way as the bees know the flowers; by the various perfumes they impart to the honey.  No more.

How could it be otherwise?  If a woman took infinite pains to reveal herself to a husband or a lover just as she really is, he would think she was suffering from some incurable mental disease.

A few of us indicate our true natures in hysterical outbreaks, fits of bitterness and suspicion; but this involuntary frankness is generally discounted by some subtle deceit.

Do men and women ever tell each other the truth?  How often does that happen?  More often than not, I think, they deal in half-lies, hiding this, embroidering that, fact.