but suicide was not in my nature. I was too completely swayed by the
sense that I was in the grasp of unknown forces, to believe in my power
of self-release. Towards my own destiny I had become entirely passive;
for my one ardent desire had spent itself, and impulse no longer
predominated over knowledge. For this reason I never thought of taking
any steps towards a complete separation, which would have made our
alienation evident to the world. Why should I rush for help to a new
course, when I was only suffering from the consequences of a deed which
had been the act of my intensest will? That would have been the logic of
one who had desires to gratify, and I had no desires. But Bertha and I
lived more and more aloof from each other. The rich find it easy to live
married and apart.

That course of our life which I have indicated in a few sentences filled
the space of years. So much misery--so slow and hideous a growth of
hatred and sin, may be compressed into a sentence! And men judge of each
other's lives through this summary medium. They epitomize the experience
of their fellow-mortal, and pronounce judgment on him in neat syntax, and
feel themselves wise and virtuous--conquerors over the temptations they
define in well-selected predicates. Seven years of wretchedness glide
glibly over the lips of the man who has never counted them out in moments
of chill disappointment, of head and heart throbbings, of dread and vain
wrestling, of remorse and despair. We learn _words_ by rote, but not
their meaning; _that_ must be paid for with our life-blood, and printed
in the subtle fibres of our nerves.

But I will hasten to finish my story. Brevity is justified at once to
those who readily understand, and to those who will never understand.

Some years after my father's death, I was sitting by the dim firelight in