Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/20

12 to her, but she would not have me, and the dull tie that I hated bound me down."

"Why did you marry?"

"Why? Oh, I loved my wife once—in a way, with a boy’s love. And there was another man after her always. The rivalry made me more eager, more blind to my true feelings. It was winning her from him I thought of more than gaining her myself."

"So lightly held, so bitterly deplored," the priest muttered.

"You bless me, Father?" the man continued; "I want it. Pray for my ease; I am in torture. My sin is great. Soon after I married my life became unbearable. At first I did not notice how dull and uninteresting my wife was, but when I saw the other woman my heart leaped out to her, and I knew I had met my fate. Then my home life became more and more dreary. The dull monotony of domesticity rose up around me, and chained me down. I grew to hate my wife’s face, with its never-varying expression of sweetness and prettiness. She was always the same: she met me with a smile every day I came home, and bid me good-bye with the same smile at the gate in