"It came at last, a pure, little, white soul from the hand of God; and to my child I gave the whole of the love, the adoration, the passion, which had been pent up in my breast for so many years for want of some one on whom I could bestow them without fear of the consequence. "My husband hated to see me so fond of the child, for his jealous nature would be content with nothing but undivided love, and in spite of my desire to make him happy, I could not leave my child unloved in order to pander to his selfish passion. He resented my reproval of his folly and withdrew himself from my society, so that I had no one to love but my child, and, although we lived in the same house, the poles were not further asunder than we were. "Then she came between us--that vile woman whom my father knew in South America--and my husband, weary of his home, of his wife, of his child, left all to go to her. What wife could put up with such an insult? Had it been any other woman, it would have been bad enough, but this special woman whom he knew I despised, whom he knew from my lips to be an infamous creature, this was the woman for whom he forsook me. "How can I believe his explanations? They are all false, glibly as they are uttered. No! I am deceived no longer, he is the same as my father, and seeks only the selfish gratification of his own appetites. The end has come, as I knew it would--the mask is torn off, and I see my husband, whom I loved and trusted during the early days of our marriage, as he really is. My father was right; there is no faith, honour, honesty, nor truth, in men; and I have only acted rightly in refusing to live with a man who could behave so to his wife and child. "Even now he is with that woman, on the feeble plea that my coldness drove him away. Does that excuse his vice? No! He should have waited until perfect love, perfect understanding, was established between us, but now we are parted for ever. He has gone back to the life most congenial to him, and I--I, like many other women, can do nothing but pray that my son may not grow up to follow in the evil footsteps of his father." On the part of the husband-- "Saints do not live among men, except in the canonization of the Church, and before my marriage I was neither better nor worse than any other young man. But without being either a Saint Anthony or a Saint Francis, I did my best to lead a decent life in every way, and if I had a few vices--or what ascetics term vices--they were so small that they were invisible except to the microscope of certain Pharisees who pass their lives in finding out their neighbours' faults, and thanking God they are not as other men are.