Page:The New Penelope.djvu/55

 This, I felt, entitled me to help; and yet help did not come. I felt forsaken of God, and sullenly shut my lips to prayer or complaint. All severely tried souls go through a similar experience. Christ himself cried out: 'My God, my God, why hast forsaken me!'"

"No wonder you felt forsaken, indeed."

"You think I was as tried as I could be then, when I had a hope of escape; but worse came after that—worse, because more hopeless."

"You were really married to him then?" I cried in alarm: "I thought you told me in the beginning, that you were not."

"Neither was I; but that did not release me. When at last I received an answer to my inquiries, confirming the statement of the immigrant from Ohio, it was too late."

"You do not mean!"—I interrupted, in a frightened voice.

"No, no! I only mean that I had committed a great error, in keeping silence on the subject at the first. You can imagine one of your acquaintances who had been several months peaceably living with a man of good appearance and repute, to whom you had seen her married, suddenly declaring her husband a bigamist and refusing to live with him; and on no other evidence than a letter obtained, nobody knew how. To me the proof was conclusive; and it made me frantic to find that it was not so received by others."

"What did he say, when you told him that you had this evidence? How did he act?"

"He swore it was a conspiracy; and declared that now he had borne enough of such contumelious conduct; he should soon bring me into subjection. He represented himself to me, as an injured and long-suffering man; and me, to myself, as an unkind, undutiful, and most unwomanly woman. He told me, what was true, that I need not expect people to believe such a 'cock and bull story;' and