Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Part III - I
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180 THE CONFESSION OF A FOOL
room, no common dressing-room ; nothing unseemly
degraded the sanctity of our union. Marriage as we
understood and realised it was a splendid institution.
The tender good-nights, repeated again and again ; the
joy of wishing each other good-morning, of asking how
we had slept, were they not due to the fact that we
occupied separate rooms? How delightful were the stolen
visits to each other, the courtesy and tenderness which
we never forgot ! How different compared with the
brazen boldness, the more or less graciously endured
brutalities which are as a rule inseparable from matrimony.
I got through an amazing amount of work, staying at
home by the side of my beloved wife who was sewing
tiny garments for the expected baby. What a lot of
time I had wasted in rendezvous and idleness in the
days gone by !
After a month of the closest companionship Marie was
laid up with a premature confinement. We had a tiny
daughter, hardly able to draw breath. Without a
moment’s delay the baby was taken charge of by a nurse
whom we knew to be a decent woman, and two days later
it passed away as it had come, without pain, from sheer
want of vitality, just after it had received private
baptism.
The mother received the news with regret, but it was
regret not unmingled with relief. A burden of infinite
cares and worries had fallen off her shoulders, for well
she knew that social prejudice would not have permitted
her to keep the prematurely-born infant under our own
roof.
After this incident we firmly made up our minds to
one thing : No more children ! We dreamed of a life
together, a life of perfect comradeship, of a man and a
woman, loving and supplementing each other, but living
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