You never thought of this; while I was too much taken up with my own
affairs just then to have any superfluous energy for other people's
welfare or misfortune.

But now we come to the heart of the question. For some years past you
have confided in me--more fully than I really cared about. While your
husband was alive I often found it rather painful to be always looking
at him through the keyhole, so to speak. But this confidence justifies
me in speaking quite frankly.

My dear Magna, listen to me. A woman of your temperament ought never to
bind herself by marriage to any man, and is certainly not fit to have
children. You were intended--do not take the words as an insult--to lead
the life of a _fille de joie_. The term sounds ugly--but I know no other
that is equally applicable. Your vehement temperament, your insatiable
desire for new excitements--in a word, your whole nature tends that way.
You cannot deny that your marriage was a grave mistake.

There was just the chance--a remote one--that you might have met the
kind of husband to suit you: an eminently masculine type, the kind who
would have kept the whip-hand over you, and regarded a wife as
half-mistress, half-slave. Even then I think your conjugal happiness
would have ceased the first day he lost the attraction of novelty.

Professor Wellmann, your quiet, correct husband, was as great a torment
to you as you were to him. Without intending it, you made his life a
misery. The dreadful scenes which were brought about by your violent and
sensual temperament so changed his disposition that he became brutal;
while to you they became a kind of second nature, a necessity, like food