resolve to conceal from me the fact that she was not what she
would have called "a pure woman". For that was really the
mainspring of her fantastic actions. She was afraid that I should
murder her. . . .

So she got up the heart attack, at the earliest possible opportunity,
on board the liner. Perhaps she was not so very much to be
blamed. You must remember that she was a New Englander, and
that New England had not yet come to loathe darkies as it does
now. Whereas, if she had come from even so little south as
Philadelphia, and had been an oldish family, she would have seen
that for me to kick Julius was not so outrageous an act as for her
cousin, Reggie Hurlbird, to say--as I have heard him say to his
English butler--that for two cents he would bat him on the pants.
Besides, the medicine-grip did not bulk as largely in her eyes as it
did in mine, where it was the symbol of the existence of an adored
wife of a day. To her it was just a useful lie. . . .

Well, there you have the position, as clear as I can make it--the
husband an ignorant fool, the wife a cold sensualist with imbecile
fears--for I was such a fool that I should never have known what
she was or was not--and the blackmailing lover. And then the
other lover came along. . . .

Well, Edward Ashburnham was worth having. Have I conveyed to
you the splendid fellow that he was--the fine soldier, the excellent
landlord, the extraordinarily kind, careful and industrious
magistrate, the upright, honest, fair-dealing, fair-thinking, public
character? I suppose I have not conveyed it to you. The truth is,
that I never knew it until the poor girl came along--the poor girl