quite irreproachable.

No, after all there _was_ something to reproach you with, although it
was not known to outsiders. While you were fighting your instincts and
trying to live as a spotless widow, your character was undergoing a
change: against your will, but not unconsciously, you were become a
perfect fury. In this way your children acquired that timidity which
they have never quite outgrown. Strangers began to notice this after a
while, and to criticise your behaviour.

Time went on. You wrote that you were obliged to do a "cure" in a
nursing home for nervous complaints. When I heard this, I could not
repress a smile, in spite of your misfortunes. Nerve specialists may be
very clever, but can they be expected, even at the highest fees, to
replace defunct husbands. You were kept in bed and dosed with bromides
and sulphonal. After a few weeks you were pronounced quite well, and
left the home a little stouter and rather languid after keeping your bed
so long.

When you got home you turned the house upside-down in a frantic fit of
"cleaning." You walked for miles; you took to cooking; and at night,
having wearied your body out with incessant work, you tried to lull your
brain by reading novels.

What was the use of it all? The day you confessed to me that you had
walked about the streets all night lest you should kill yourself and
your children, I realised that your powers of resistance were at an end.
A week later you had embarked upon your first _liaison_. A month later
the whole town was aware of it.