Page:The New Penelope.djvu/32

26 mentioned my troubles; but while they were willing to do anything for me in the way of a common friendly service, like the loaning of an article of household convenience, or sitting with me when Benton was sick—as he very often was—they could not understand other needs, or minister to the sickness of the mind. If I received any counsel, it was to the effect that a woman was in every way better off to be married. I used to wonder why God had not made us married—why he had given us our individual natures, since there was forever this necessity of being paired!"

"Yet you had loved your husband?"

"I had never ceased to love him!—and that was just what these people could not understand. Death cut them loose from everything, and they were left with only strong desires, and no sentiment to sanctify them. That I should love a dead husband, and turn with disgust from a living one, was inexplicable to them."

"My dear, I think I see the rock on which you wrecked your happiness." For the moment I had forgotten what she had told me in the beginning, that Seabrook had married her illegally; and was imagining her married to a living husband, and loving only the memory of one dead. She saw my error, and informed me by a look. Pushing away the intervening table with its diminished contents, and renewing the fire, Mrs. Greyfield proceeded:

"It would take too long to go over the feelings of those times, and assign their causes. You are a woman that can put yourself in my place, to a great extent, though not wholly; for there are some things that cannot be imagined, and only come by experience."

"Benton was two years and a half old; a very delicate child, suffering nearly all the time with chills and fever. I had occasional attacks of illness from the malaria, always to be met with on the clearing up of low-lands near a river. Still I was able to sew enough to keep a shelter over our heads, and bread in our mouths, until I had been a year in