Conscious that your wife was a hopeless
lunatic whose present or future could in no way be influenced by our
actions, I reasoned that we wronged no one in taking the happiness so
long denied us.
"The last three years of my life have been full of desolation and
sorrow. From the day my mother died, the stars of light which had
gemmed the firmament for me, seemed one by one to be obliterated,
until I stood in utter darkness. You found me in the very blackest
hour of all--and you seemed a shining sun to me.
"Yet so soon as my tired brain and sorrow-worn heart were able to
think and reason, I realised that it was not the man I had worshipped
as an ideal, who had come to me and asked me to lower my standard of
womanhood. It was another and less worthy man--and this other was to
be my companion through time, and perhaps eternity. When I learned
that your insane wife was my sister, and that knowing this fact you
yet planned our flight, an indescribable feeling of repulsion awoke
in my heart.
"I confess that this arose more from a sentiment than a principle.
The relationship of your wife to me made the contemplated sin no
greater, but rendered it more tasteless.
"Had I gone away with you as I consented to do, the world would have
said, she but follows her fatal inheritance--like mother like
daughter.
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