The following day Clive replied to his wife by cable: "As it seems to
make no unpleasant difference to you I have concluded to remain in New
York. Please take whatever steps you may find most convenient and
agreeable for yourself."
And, following this he wrote her: "I am inexpressibly sorry to cause you any new annoyance and
to arouse once more your just impatience and resentment. But
I see no use in a recapitulation of my shortcomings and of
your own many disappointments in the man you married.
"Please remember that I have always assumed all blame for our
marriage; and that I shall always charge myself with it. I
have no reply to make to your reproaches,--no defence; I was
not in love with you when I married you--which is as serious
an offence as any man can perpetrate toward any woman. And I
do not now blame you for a very natural refusal to tolerate
anything approaching the sympathy and intimacy that ought to
exist between husband and wife.
"I did entertain a hazy idea that affection and perhaps love
might be ultimately possible even under the circumstances of
such a marriage as ours; and in a youthful, ignorant, and
inexperienced way I attempted to bring it about. My notions
of our mutual obligations were very vague and indefinite.
"Please believe I did not realise how utterly distasteful any
such ideas were to you, and how deep was your personal
disinclination for the man you married.
"I understand now how many mistakes I made before I finally
rid you of myself, and gave you a chance to live your life in
your own way unharassed by the interference of a young,
ignorant, and probably aggressive man.
"Your aversion to motherhood was, after all, your own affair.
Man has no right to demand that of woman. I took a very
bullying and intolerant attitude toward you--not, as I now
realise, from any real conviction on the subject, but because
I liked and wanted children, and also because I was
influenced by the cant of the hour--the fashion being to
demand of woman, on ethical grounds, quantitative
reproduction as a marriage offering to the Almighty. As
though indiscriminate and wholesale addition to humanity were
an admirable and religious duty. Nothing, even in the Old
Testament, is more stupid than such a doctrine; no child
should ever be born unwelcome to both parents.
"I am sorry I could not find your circle of friends
interesting. I sometimes think I might have, had you and I
been mutually sympathetic. But the situation was impossible;
our ideas, interests, convictions, tastes, were radically at
variance; we had absolutely nothing in common to build on.
What marriage ties could endure the strain of such
conditions? The fault was mine, Winifred; I am sorry for
you.