Page:The Great Secret.djvu/19

Rh and religious woman—intensely religious, as far as her mistaken ideas about religion went. He was not religious, but he had a certain moral dignity which made him abhor being what his hating partner so constantly charged him with.

His friends told him that she was insane, and should be shut up; that it was a monomania which he should not trouble himself about. They were friends only who could not be expected to enter into his memory of the past fond days; they saw only an evil-minded woman trying to drag a man down to shame and perdition; but he carried with him for ever the picture of a fresh young girl who had loved him once, but whom he had always adored; and this was his misery and humiliation now, the calamity that had broken him down at last.

Yes, he was now a liberated man, as far as the law could free him, and the woman could curse and revile him when she was not praying.

He had humbled himself to the dust first in the futile effort to win her back; then, seeing how idle all these efforts were, he gave her what she wanted—her liberty.

It was easily enough managed with a little money. The creature was bought to swear in court that she was his mistress, while he had only to remain silent under the charges of cruelty and unfaithfulness; and she had not spared him.

The papers had recounted all his dastardly acts of unmanly abuse of this pure wife; the audience in the court hissed him when he departed, shamed, yet free; the judges had said in strong terms that hanging was too mild a punishment for such an unmitigated scoundrel; and so he had become a branded criminal,