Right about face, Mr. Gordon, and become the lover you were, and
jealousy will be driven from your threshold.
It is your own lack of thoughtfulness, your own tactless and tasteless
methods with your wife, which have caused the change in her manner. She
is not jealous, she is only lonely, heart-hungry, disillusioned.
You are less noble, less considerate, less tender, less sympathetic
than she believed. For the man to whom these adjectives can be applied
will guard, love, and cherish the wife of his youth, and the mother of
his children, before all other considerations; and he will understand
how sensitive a fading wife may be, and not confound that sensitiveness
with ignoble jealousy.
It is you, Charles Gordon, who must cure your wife of nerves, hysteria,
and incipient jealousy, not I.
To Mrs. Clarence St. Claire
_Concerning Her Husband_
I am sorry that your matrimonial barque meets so many rough winds while
hardly out of Honeymoon Bay.
Clarence and you seemed so deeply in love when I last saw you, six
months after your wedding, that I had hoped all might go well with you.
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