He could say
that to me, because he knows that I had much trial in my marriage,
from my husband's illness, which hindered his plans and saddened him;
and he knows that I have felt how hard it is to walk always in fear
of hurting another who is tied to us."
Dorothea waited a little; she had discerned a faint pleasure stealing
over Rosamond's face. But there was no answer, and she went on,
with a gathering tremor, "Marriage is so unlike everything else.
There is something even awful in the nearness it brings. Even if we
loved some one else better than--than those we were married to,
it would be no use"--poor Dorothea, in her palpitating anxiety,
could only seize her language brokenly--"I mean, marriage drinks
up all our power of giving or getting any blessedness in that sort
of love. I know it may be very dear--but it murders our marriage--
and then the marriage stays with us like a murder--and everything
else is gone. And then our husband--if he loved and trusted us,
and we have not helped him, but made a curse in his life--"
Her voice had sunk very low: there was a dread upon her of presuming
too far, and of speaking as if she herself were perfection
addressing error. She was too much preoccupied with her own anxiety,
to be aware that Rosamond was trembling too; and filled with the need
to express pitying fellowship rather than rebuke, she put her hands on
Rosamond's, and said with more agitated rapidity,--"I know, I know that
the feeling may be very dear--it has taken hold of us unawares--it is so
hard, it may seem like death to part with it--and we are weak--I am weak--"
The waves of her own sorrow, from out of which she was struggling
to save another, rushed over Dorothea with conquering force.
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