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 fidelity prove too heavy a burden for you, then remember that you are the guardian of your husband's honour, and I beg of you take care that this is not publicly injured.

'For there is this enormous difference between a wife's and a husband's infidelity — that the faithless husband does not harm the wife, while her adultery, should it become known, makes her husband ridiculous. No doubt it is stupid and unjust, but it cannot be helped; it has been so through all the ages and will go on being so as long as marriage exists, and perhaps it is not so stupid after all, for the wife's infidelity bears fruit within the home, the husband's outside.

'Shame on the women who thus make their husbands the laughing-stock of the town!

'But not a whit better, Marie, are those, who, without being actually faithless, show themselves in society, at theatres, in public thoroughfares, surrounded by a troupe of admirers, while the husband walks behind like a molly-coddle.

'There is no excuse for them whatever. Even the silliest fool is too good to be made ridiculous by the woman whose children bear his name.

'Such women ought to be tied to the whipping-post, every one of them.'

So severely did I lecture Marie on behalf of her future husband.