SHALL A WIFE FORGIVE HER HUSBAND FOR UNFAITHFULNESS? I have thought deeply about this, remembering what I suffered with Julian. It is terribly hard to tell the truth; a woman is filled with shame for herself and for her whole sex when she tries to tell the truth about the unfaithfulness of husbands. _How long shall a wife forgive? How much shall she deliberately ignore?_ Many women say: "I would never forgive my husband if he deceived me." Others say: "I would never forgive my husband if I _knew_ that he had deceived me." And still others say: "If my husband must deceive me, I hope he will never let me know it." The tragic truth is (as all women vaguely suspect) that thousands of devoted husbands, hundreds of thousands of average husbands have at one time or another fallen from grace. Julian used to say that if all the men in America who have broken the seventh commandment were sent away to do penance on lonely mountain tops, we should run short of mountains. He told me also that a man can love his wife so sincerely that he would gladly die for her, yet, in a moment of temptation, he may be untrue to her. Julian was an impossible person, but other clean-minded men, including my dear Christopher, have told me the same thing. The truth is that most men have never learned to resist sex temptation; they grow up with the knowledge that they need not resist temptation, which is the fault of society, as now organized, the fault of wrong teaching, of insincere preaching, of nation-wide hypocrisy. I have come to see that women, so long as they have not set themselves as a body against this evil system (which they might evidently change if they would act together) have no right to complain of its inevitable consequences. Men will abandon sex excesses, as they have abandoned drinking excesses, gradually, through education, through reasonable appeal, through the resistless force of public opinion intelligently aroused and directed by devoted women. And in no other way! Meantime, it is the duty of individual wives to be merciful, as far as they can, towards erring husbands. The cure lies often in more love from the wife rather than in less love. To any tortured wife who knows or half knows certain things about her husband, I say this--"Dear friend, as long as you love him, forgive him. As long as he loves you, forgive him. Be patient--enduring. Make the hard fight against sensuality with your husband, but don't let him know you are making it. Make this fight exactly as you would a similar fight against alcohol or drugs." A woman must be on her guard, however, lest she hide under a cloak of forgiveness, some base motive in her own heart. Alas! I know, better than anyone, how easily we women can deceive ourselves.