she is too high-souled to tell you who it is that you would indeed do
well to lock up in the deepest dungeon-cell! What I have heard from your
lips breaks every tie that time had knit between us. I do not demand
that my friends should be wealthy, that they should have any attractions
or charm, any special gifts of mind or body; but we must meet on common
ground: that of honorable feeling. That you did not bring into the
world, or you have lost it; and from this hour I am a stranger to you and
never wish to see you again, excepting by the side of your husband when
he requires me."

He spoke the last words with such immeasurable dignity that Neforis was
startled and bereft of all self-control. She had been treated as a
wretch worthy of utter scorn by a man beneath her in rank, but whom she
always regarded as one of the most honest, frank and pure-minded she had
ever known; a man indispensable to her husband, because he knew how to
mitigate his sufferings, and could restrain him from the abuse of his
narcotic anodyne. He was the only physician of repute, far and wide.
She was to be deprived of the services of this valuable ally, to whom
little Mary and many of the household owed their lives, by this Syrian
girl; and she herself, sure that she was a good and capable wife and
mother, was to stand there like a thing despised and avoided by every
honest man, through this evil genius of her house!

It was too much. Tortured by rage, vexation, and sincere distress, she
said in a complaining voice, while the tears started to her eyes:

"But what is the meaning of all this? You, who know me, who have seen me
ruling and caring for my family, you turn your back upon me in my own
house and point the finger at me? Have I not always been a faithful
wife, nursing my husband for years and never leaving his sick-bed, never