Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/201



October the twenty-first.

great crises of life are not, I think, necessarily those which are in themselves the hardest to bear, but those for which we are least prepared. My present fate has the distinction of possessing both these features. Like many forms of distinction, it is more uncomfortable than enviable.

I suppose one ought to be glad if one is capable of the sardonic. Perhaps it is a healthy sign. Probably that class of people who pass their lives in a chronic fear of being or of being thought "morbid" would call it so. On the contrary, I doubt if it is a sign of anything but the mere struggle for human existence. I am the mother of a child, and I must live. Since I must live, I cannot suffer beyond a certain point. I dimly perceive that if I could rise to the level of something quite alien to my nature, I might thrust off by sheer mechanics a measure of what I endure. I wonder if this expulsive power is scorn?